Tax treatysaves most on royaltiesChecked 2026-08-21Türkiye incentive programme

The Türkiye and India tax treaty: what leaving profit costs

The Indian treaty is the outlier on royalties. Where almost every Türkiye treaty caps royalties at 10%, India sits at 15%, which matters if the Indian parent licenses technology or content into the Turkish company. Dividends are a flat 15%.

By Marat SemenovCo-founder, CyberScope Solutions

15%Dividends leaving Türkiye15% either way

10%Interest leaving Türkiye10% either way

15%Royalties leaving Türkiye20% without the treaty

5% lowerThe treaty's biggest cut, on royalties

Türkiye refunds half of what a software company or game studio spends on advertising, app store commissions and hosting when it sells to customers abroad, and up to 70% when those customers are in one of twenty target markets. It is paid in cash, against invoices you have already settled. Try it with your own numbers.

What you spend a year on ads and platform fees $

Paid back in Türkiye $350,000 a year, in cash, at the 50% to 70% rate

See the full breakdown

01Where does the India treaty actually save money?

Türkiye withholds 20% on a royalty with no treaty in place and 15% under this one, so on $500,000 of licence fees paid to a parent in India, $25,000 a year stays with the group instead of going to the tax office.

Licence fee leaving Türkiye$500,000
Withheld without a treaty, at 20%$100,000
Withheld under this treaty, at 15%$75,000
What the treaty saves on this payment$25,000

02What does it cost to pay a dividend to India?

This treaty caps Türkiye at 15% and Türkiye already charges 15% at home, so paying a dividend to a parent in India costs 15% either way.

What Türkiye charges with no treaty15%
The ceiling this treaty sets15%
What Türkiye actually deducts15%

03What does Türkiye withhold on payments to India?

Payment leaving Türkiye	What you actually pay	Türkiye's rate with no treaty	The ceiling this treaty sets	Conditions
Dividends	15%	15%	15%	The treaty allows Türkiye up to 15% here, which is above the 15% it charges anyway, so this line is unchanged by the treaty.15%, with no shareholding thresholdsource checked 2026-08-21
Interest	10%	10%	10% to 15%	The treaty allows Türkiye up to 10% to 15% here, which is above the 10% it charges anyway, so this line is unchanged by the treaty.source checked 2026-08-21
Royalties	treaty helps15%	20%	15%	Türkiye's domestic royalty rate is 20%source checked 2026-08-21

04How does the India treaty compare with Türkiye's others?

At 15%, India sits above 5%, which is where the United States lands, and above 18 other treaties in this atlas.

India against every other Türkiye treaty in this atlas, by royalty rate. The number under each stop is how many treaties sit on it.

5%1
10%18
15%1

Türkiye caps royalties at 10% in almost every treaty it has signed. India is the exception at 15%, which makes it the one treaty in this set where the licensing structure deserves as much attention as the shareholding.

05What happens to the money once it lands in India?

In India	Rate
Corporate tax on ordinary profit	25% or 30% for domestic companies depending on turnoversource checked 2026-08-20
Withholding tax on dividends to a foreign parent	20%source checked 2026-08-20

Türkiye against India, measure by measure.

06What catches out groups based in India?

Royalties at 15% are the highest in this comparison set, where 10% is the norm.
Dividends are flat with no threshold, so there is no shareholding structure to optimise.
India's own domestic outbound dividend rate is 20%, so the return leg is more expensive than the outbound one.

07How does this sit alongside what Türkiye pays India groups back?

Indian groups already running development at home can put their commercial spending through a Turkish company and claim against it. Payment comes against invoices, so nothing here waits on a distribution or depends on one being made.

What you spend it on	Programme item	Paid back	Annual cap
Ads and player acquisition	Digital product promotion: ads & marketing (up to 10 products/yr)	50% to 70%	50 000 000 ₺ ≈ $1,043,841
App store and platform commissions	App store & platform commissions (up to 10 products/yr)	50%	20 000 000 ₺ ≈ $417,537
Hosting and servers	Hosting costs	50%	5 000 000 ₺ ≈ $104,384

What Türkiye would pay back on your spending

Türkiye runs a government programme that refunds part of what a software company or game studio spends on reaching customers abroad. It covers advertising, app store and platform commissions, and hosting. The refund is paid in cash against invoices the company has already settled, so it does not depend on the company making a profit. The standard rate is 50%, and it rises to 70% when the customers being targeted are in one of the twenty countries on the Turkish Ministry of Trade's target list.

Put your own yearly figures in below. The rates and the annual caps come from the same file as our full calculator, and the total updates as you type.

Ads and player acquisition $ App store and platform commissions $ Hosting and servers $ Most of my customers are in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan or another of the twenty target-list countries, so the rate is 70% instead of 50%. India is one of them.

Back in cash, every year $0

Have us check this figure Open the full calculator, all 16 items

08Questions we get asked

Why does the royalty rate matter?

If the parent licenses technology, engine code or content to the Turkish company, those payments leave as royalties. A five point difference on a large licence fee is real money.

Is there a way around it?

Not by structuring alone. What changes the answer is where the intellectual property sits and what the Turkish company is genuinely paying for.

Who is telling you this

CyberScope Solutions is an Istanbul consultancy that manages Türkiye's IT export incentive claims for software companies and game studios. Treaty rates decide what a group pays to move profit, and they come up in almost every first conversation, so we keep them written down rather than looked up each time.

Every figure is sourced. Each number links to the page it came from and carries the date we last checked it.
You find out early if it is not for you. The first call is thirty minutes and we will say plainly if your spend pattern does not suit the programme.
These pages get rebuilt, not left. Rates and caps come from the same file as our calculator, so when one changes the page changes with it.

Turn that number into money

Send us the rough shape of your spend. You get back what it is worth, what setting it up involves, and how fast the first claim can go in. Companies already operating here treat this as routine, and the six month window means the clock is running on invoices you have already paid.

A reply from a person within one working day
No mailing list, no drip sequence
Thirty minutes, and you keep the numbers either way

09Where these numbers come from

https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/turkey/corporate/withholding-taxes checked 2026-08-21
https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/quick-charts/corporate-income-tax-cit-rates checked 2026-08-20
https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/quick-charts/withholding-tax-wht-rates checked 2026-08-20

About this page

This is general information about public funding and tax rules. It is not tax, legal or financial advice, and nothing here is an offer or a guarantee of any outcome. The figures come from the sources listed above and were correct on the dates shown beside them.

Rules change often and every company's position is different, so take advice from a qualified professional in the relevant country before acting on anything here. Support under any programme depends on eligibility and on approval by the authority that runs it. CyberScope Solutions accepts no liability for decisions taken on the basis of this page. The named author writes for the company in a professional capacity and carries no personal liability for its contents.

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