UPDATE - Türkiye unveils list of top 100 taxpayers

REVISES DECK AND LEDE, ADDS MORE DETAILS

By Goksel Yildirim, Hulya Omur Uylas, Zeynep Duyar, and Gokhan Ergocun

ANKARA / ISTANBUL - Türkiye has unveiled its annual list of the country’s top taxpayers, with Selcuk Bayraktar, the chairman of unmanned aerial vehicle producer Baykar, ranking first, driven by the firm’s soaring export revenues.

Under the Revenue Administration list of top 100 taxpayers for 2024, Haluk Bayraktar, Baykar’s CEO, ranked second, with Baykar executives managing to top the list for the last four years.

In 2024, Selcuk Bayraktar paid 2.76 billion Turkish liras ($84 million) in income tax, while Haluk Bayraktar paid 2.53 billion liras ($77 million).

The amount of tax paid by the Bayraktars has risen some 18-fold since 2021, driven by Baykar's export revenues.

Baykar, the leading exporter firm in the defense and aviation sector, generated 90% of its 2024 revenue from exports.

It racked up $1.8 billion in exports last year, ranking among the country’s top 10 companies with the highest exports for the second consecutive year.

The taxpayer in third place did not wish to have their name disclosed, while number four was Mustafa Rahmi Koc, honorary chairman of Turkish conglomerate Koc Holding, with 757.75 million liras ($23 million).

The taxpayers in the 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th slots did not wish to disclose their names. Erman Ilicak, the honorary chairman of Turkish conglomerate Renaissance Holding, was in 10th place with 372.7 million liras ($11.3 million).

On the top 100 list, a total of 79 names did not want their names disclosed.

They declared an average taxable income of 274,288 liras ($8,349), and the average income tax assessed on this taxable income was 81,526 liras ($2,481).

Across the country, 5.13 million taxpayers filed annual income tax returns during the same period, with a total taxable income of 1.4 trillion liras ($42.6 billion).

Based on this amount, 418.46 billion liras ($12.73 billion) in income tax was assessed.

- Corporate tax

In the 2024 tax period, 32 of the top 100 taxpayers who paid the highest corporate tax did not want their names disclosed, while banks dominated the list’s top ranks.

Some 1.17 million taxpayers filed corporate tax returns across the country; these returns reported a taxable income of 4.34 trillion liras ($132.11 billion), and corporate tax of 990.5 billion liras ($30.15 billion) was assessed on this amount.

They declared an average taxable income of 3.7 million liras ($112,600), and the average corporate tax assessed on this taxable income was determined to be 845,557 liras ($25,740).

On the corporate tax side, private lender Garanti Bank ranked first on the list with 25.29 billion liras ($769.8 million).

State-run lender Ziraat Bank ranked second with 20.84 billion liras ($634.4 million), while participation lender Kuveyt Turk ranked third with 12.07 billion liras ($367.4 million).

The USD/TRY exchange rate was at 32.85 on average during 2024.