Getting your export income into Türkiye before the deadline
The 0% deduction has four conditions. Three are settled when you incorporate. This one has to be handled every year, and it is a calendar job rather than a hard one.
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The 0% IT tax regime
The 0% rate on IT export income is real and it is generous. Under Article 10/1-(ğ), with the rate raised by Presidential Decision No. 11257 of 30 April 2026, qualifying service export income is deducted from the corporate tax base in full from 1 January 2026. Software, game and IT service revenue billed to customers abroad ends up taxed at nothing, and exported services are VAT exempt on top.
It comes with four conditions. Three of them are structural: a Türkiye-registered company, invoices issued to the foreign customer, and the service used abroad. You settle those once, when you set the business up, and then they take care of themselves.
The fourth is different, because it comes round every year. The revenue has to be brought into Türkiye by the corporate tax return deadline.
The date
Corporate tax returns are filed by the end of the fourth month after the financial year ends. For a company on the calendar year, that is the end of April, and the tax assessed is payable in the same month.
So the money relating to your qualifying export income needs to be in Türkiye by then. Not invoiced, not earned, not sitting in a balance somewhere. Arrived.
That is the whole condition. It is a date, and dates are the easiest kind of problem to solve.
Where the money usually is
For a software company, revenue rarely travels in a straight line from customer to bank account. It stops on the way, and those stops are where the deadline gets missed.
App store balances. Apple and Google hold your money on their own payout schedule, and the balance for December often does not land until well into the new year. That is normal and it is fine, as long as somebody is watching the calendar rather than assuming it clears itself.
Payment processors. Stripe, Paddle, PayPal and the rest hold balances, sometimes with reserves against chargebacks. Reserve policies are theirs, not yours, which is exactly why you want to know about them in February rather than in the last week of April.
Foreign bank accounts. Companies that kept a dollar account abroad from before the Turkish entity existed often keep using it out of habit. Money there has been received by the group but has not reached Türkiye.
Group billing. If a parent company abroad invoices the customers and passes work down to the Turkish entity, the export revenue belongs to the parent. This is a structural issue rather than a timing one, and fixing it early matters because the same arrangement also determines whether your advertising, hosting and store commissions qualify for reimbursement under Decision No. 10962.
How to make it a non-issue
The companies that never think about this run a simple routine.
Sweep quarterly. Bring balances into the Turkish company four times a year rather than once. Nothing then depends on a single April scramble, and your accountant is reconciling smaller amounts more often.
Know your payout timings. Write down, once, how long each platform and processor holds your money. Then you know in advance which December revenue lands in January and which lands in March.
Put the date in the finance calendar with a January warning. The deadline is the end of April. The useful reminder is three months earlier, when you can still do something about a reserve or a slow payout.
Keep the bank records tidy. The evidence that the money arrived is your bank statements, which you are keeping anyway for the incentive claims.
Why it is worth the small effort
The upside here is large and the effort is light. A studio with $2M of export revenue is looking at a corporate tax bill of nothing at all on that income, provided the money is home in time. Set against that, four transfers a year and a date in a calendar is not a demanding trade.
It is also one of the tasks we simply take over. Our clients get the sweep schedule, the payout timings mapped for each platform they use, and the April deadline managed as part of the same cycle that files their quarterly claims. Nobody internally has to remember it.
If you want to see the whole picture, the 0% regime post covers all four conditions, and the calculator covers the reimbursement side.
Frequently asked
When exactly is the deadline?
Corporate tax returns are filed by the end of the fourth month following the end of the financial year. For a company on the calendar year that means the end of April, with the assessed tax payable in the same month. The Revenue Administration occasionally extends deadlines by circular, so the working assumption should be the end of April.
Does every last dollar have to arrive?
The condition attaches to the income you are claiming the deduction on, so the sensible approach is to bring across everything relating to that year's qualifying revenue and to have the bank records that show it. Cash you are deliberately leaving abroad for another reason is a conversation to have in advance.
What about money held by Apple, Google or Stripe?
This is where it usually goes wrong. A balance sitting in a store or processor account has been earned but has not reached Türkiye. Payout schedules and reserve policies are set by the platform, not by you, so those balances need watching well before April rather than in April.
We invoice through a foreign group company. Does that work?
It puts the revenue outside the Turkish entity, which is the entity claiming the deduction. Where a group already bills centrally, it normally needs restructuring so the Turkish company invoices its customers abroad directly. Sort that out early, because it also determines whether your growth spending qualifies for reimbursement.
Is this hard?
No. It is a date in the finance calendar and a quarterly habit. Companies that miss it are almost always companies where nobody owned the task.
Sources
https://cyberscope.solutions/blog/bringing-export-income-into-turkiye/ · Updated July 16, 2026 · CyberScope Solutions