Property Tax in Turkey: How to Pay It from Abroad in 2026 (Sicil Number, Municipal Portals, Deadlines)

An owner living abroad asked us last week: "We know about the income tax on the rent. But there is apparently something else paid to the municipality, and nobody has explained it. Where do we pay it, and how?"

That "something paid to the municipality" is property tax, emlak vergisi. It is small next to rental income tax, but it has two habits: it falls due twice a year in two different months, and if it is unpaid you cannot sell the flat. What the tax is, the rates and the assessed value are in Turkish property tax: an owner's guide; the 2026 jump and the statutory cap are in the 2026 reassessment. This article is only about the procedure: which municipality, which screen, which number, which date.

First, find the right municipality

Property tax is paid to the district municipality named on your title deed. Not to the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, not to the tax office. A flat in Beşiktaş pays Beşiktaş Municipality; a flat in Bahçelievler pays Bahçelievler Municipality.

The trap is that the geography of listing portals and the geography of the land registry do not always agree. A flat we valued last week appears on every portal under Beylikdüzü; its title deed says Büyükçekmece, and its tax goes to Büyükçekmece Municipality. Read the district from the ilçe line of your tapu (title deed), not from a listing. An owner with flats in several districts deals with several municipalities separately, and that scatter is the number one reason an instalment gets forgotten.

Step 1: Register after you buy

When you buy, the municipality does not automatically know you. The Property Tax Law requires a declaration (emlak bildirimi) to the district by the end of the year of purchase. If you bought in the last three months of the year, it is due within three months of the purchase. Liability itself starts from the budget year after the purchase: the whole of the year of sale belongs to the seller, and you pay from the following year.

What you need: a copy of the title deed, ID (for foreigners the foreign ID number, yabancı kimlik no, or a passport), the municipality's declaration form, and if someone files for you, an original power of attorney. Purchases by a company add the signature circular. Bahçelievler Municipality lists the whole thing as a fifteen-minute service; it is not hard, it is simply not known about.

Three ways to file:

• e-Devlet. Where the municipality has switched on the "Emlak Vergisi Bildirimi" service, you pick the property from your title records and submit online. On the day we checked, the Istanbul districts offering it were Üsküdar, Esenyurt, Zeytinburnu, Ataşehir, Kadıköy, Beylikdüzü, Çekmeköy, Bahçelievler, Bağcılar, Güngören and Arnavutköy; the list grows, so search for your own district.
• The municipality's own e-belediye portal. Some districts accept the declaration through their own system, with an e-Devlet or portal login.
• At the counter, by a relative or by us, with a power of attorney.

The land registry already transmits transfer data to municipalities electronically, and many districts open the file themselves. The declaration is still your legal duty. Without it the municipality assesses the tax on its own initiative and adds a penalty: for the first year, the higher of a procedural fine or a tax-loss penalty, and tax-loss penalties for later years. The declaration also fixes your tax value, which is the floor for the price you can declare at the land registry when you sell; see the declared-price penalty.

Step 2: Learn your sicil number

The municipality knows you by an emlak sicil numarası, a taxpayer file number. It is not on the title deed; it is printed on the municipality's assessment slip and on any earlier receipt. If you do not have it, query the municipality's e-belediye portal with your Turkish ID or tax number, call its 444 call centre, or go to the counter with ID.

Find it once and keep it. Every way of paying from abroad runs through this number: it goes in the description of a bank transfer, in the query field of the portal, and it is what anyone paying on your behalf uses.

Step 3: Check the balance

Before paying you want to see the amount. Three screens:

1. The "quick debt query" on the municipality's e-belediye portal. No login. It accepts the sicil number, a Turkish ID number or a tax number. Beşiktaş's portal explicitly allows the tax-number query, which makes it the easiest screen for a foreign owner who holds only a vergi no. Whether a foreign ID number works in the "TC kimlik" field varies by municipality; if it fails, try the tax number.
2. e-Devlet. Under each municipality's heading you will find "Borç İşlemleri", "Tahakkuk Bilgileri Sorgulama" and "Beyan Bilgileri Sorgulama". There is no single national property-tax screen; search by the municipality's name.
3. The call centre, with the sicil number.

An honest note for foreign owners on e-Devlet: passwords are issued at PTT branches in Turkey to holders of a foreign ID number with a valid residence permit. We could not find an official source confirming that Turkish consulates issue them to foreigners abroad. A non-resident owner should assume they cannot use e-Devlet, and rely on the portal query and bank transfer, or on a representative in Turkey.

Step 4: The calendar and late-payment interest

Paying the whole year in one go during the first window is allowed, and for an owner abroad it is the safest habit: one effort in May and nothing to remember in November.

A late instalment accrues late-payment interest at 3.7% per month, pro rata by day, the rate in force since 13 November 2025. Third-party sites still quoting 2% or 4.5% are out of date. A ₺6,600 bill forgotten for a year comes back with roughly ₺2,900 added. Small money, but it is exactly the kind of debt that blocks a sale.

Step 5: Payment channels, seen from abroad

Two rules hold across every channel. First: someone else can pay. The debt attaches to the file, not to the person; anyone who knows the sicil number can pay at the counter, at a bank or on the portal. For our owners abroad we do exactly that and attach the receipt to the monthly statement. Second: keep the receipt. The portals let you download a collection receipt after payment; if you declare rental income under the actual-expense method, that receipt is the evidence for a deductible expense on your rental income tax return.

What is on the bill: the tax plus a 10% surcharge

The amount the municipality assesses has two lines. In Istanbul a dwelling pays 0.2% of its tax value as building tax; on top comes a 10% contribution to the protection of cultural heritage. A flat with a registered tax value of ₺3,000,000 pays ₺6,000 in tax and ₺600 in surcharge, ₺6,600 in total, in two instalments of ₺3,300.

Tax values were reassessed for 2026 and the law capped the jump: the 2026 value cannot exceed "two times more" than the 2025 value, that is, three times it. If your bill is higher than you expected, check that ceiling first; how to do so is in the 2026 reassessment guide.

Other municipal items you may be thinking of

"Something paid to the municipality" sometimes turns out not to be property tax. Three items that get confused with it:

• Environmental cleaning tax (ÇTV). For dwellings it is charged per cubic metre of water on the İSKİ water bill, ₺4 per m³ in metropolitan areas in 2026. The payer is the water subscriber, meaning whoever lives there. A landlord with a tenant never sees it; on a vacant flat with the subscription in your name, you pay on whatever water you use. Who pays what, line by line, is in who pays aidat.
• Aidat, the building service charge. Paid to the building management, not the municipality; not a tax.
• The valuable-housing tax. A national tax paid to the tax office, not the municipality, on dwellings whose building tax value exceeds ₺17,711,000 in 2026; declared by 20 February, paid in February and August. An owner with a single dwelling in Turkey is exempt, and the same rule applies to foreigners.

The zero-rate exemption you may read about for pensioners and people with no income is open only to pensioners of a social security institution established by Turkish law. A pension from abroad does not qualify.

Selling: a flat with tax arrears does not transfer

Since 2021 the Property Tax Law says that a property with property-tax arrears cannot be transferred, save for inheritance, court orders and enforcement sales. Land registries no longer check this with a paper "no arrears" letter; they query the municipality's system electronically. Settle both instalments of the year of sale before the registry appointment; if the November instalment has not been assessed yet, ask the municipality to assess it early.

Some registries also ask for the municipality's tax-value statement; on e-Devlet it is called "Emlak Vergisi Bildirim Sureti (Rayiç Bedel) Belgesi" under your municipality's heading. Seller and buyer are jointly liable for unpaid tax of the year of transfer and earlier years; a buyer who pays can recover from the seller, but no buyer wants to test that. The rest of a sale's costs, and how to complete one without flying in, are in selling your Istanbul property from abroad.

The one-page checklist

• My counterpart is the district municipality on my title deed, read from the deed, not from a listing.
• I filed the declaration before the end of the year I bought (within three months if I bought in the last quarter).
• I have my sicil number written down.
• I paid the full year in May, or November is in my calendar.
• I downloaded the receipt and filed it with my rental-income papers.
• If I am selling, both instalments of the year of sale are settled before the registry appointment.
• Someone in Turkey knows my sicil number and can pay on my behalf.
• Not sure which of these are done? The remote owner check scores the ten most-missed items in a minute.

If you would rather not run this calendar from another country, property-tax instalments and the DASK (compulsory earthquake insurance) renewal are already part of property management, alongside rent collection and the monthly statement.