How Much Tax Is Included in Prices in Türkiye?

How Much Tax Do We Pay in the Price of Goods in Türkiye?

Tax expert Ozan Bingöl has published calculations showing how much of the retail price of certain products in Türkiye is made up of taxes.

His examples include cigarettes, alcoholic drinks, a smartphone, a motorcycle and a car. The calculations show that the tax share can vary significantly depending on the type of product.

How Much of the Price Goes to Taxes?

• Cigarettes priced at 100 TL: 85 TL in taxes
• Rakı priced at 1,300 TL: 840 TL in taxes
• A phone priced at 230,000 TL: 117,000 TL in taxes
• A motorcycle priced at 520,000 TL: 204,000 TL in taxes
• A car priced at 6 million TL: 4.3 million TL in taxes

Based on the figures provided by Bingöl, taxes account for approximately 85% of the cigarette price, 64.6% of the rakı price, 50.9% of the phone price, 39.2% of the motorcycle price and 71.7% of the car price.

A 6 Million TL Car

The largest example in Bingöl's calculation concerns a car priced at 6 million TL. According to his calculation, around 4.3 million TL of this amount consists of taxes.

In this example, approximately 71.7% of the final price of the car represents the tax component.

For comparison, taxes on the motorcycle in the example amount to around 204,000 TL out of a total price of 520,000 TL, or approximately 39.2% of the final price.

What Do These Calculations Show?

The examples published by Ozan Bingöl illustrate how much the tax share can differ depending on the type of product. The tax component is particularly significant for categories subject to special taxation mechanisms, including tobacco and alcohol products, automobiles and certain other goods.

At the same time, these figures represent calculations for specific examples and should not be interpreted as a single tax rate applicable to every product within a particular category.

For example, the 71.7% figure for the car refers to the specific vehicle and price used in the expert's calculation. It does not mean that taxes make up exactly 71.7% of the price of every car in Türkiye.

Such calculations provide a clearer picture of the difference between a product's pre-tax value and the final amount paid by the consumer.

Source: calculations by tax expert Ozan Bingöl.

Image generated with the help of artificial intelligence.