VAT Guide for E-commerce: For Trendyol Sellers (2026)

When you sell a product for 1.200 TL on Trendyol, 200 TL of that amount is not your income — it is the VAT you collect on behalf of the state. This is where the biggest misconception in most sellers' profit calculations begins: mistaking VAT-inclusive revenue for income. In this article we cover the 2026 VAT rates, the "output − deductible = payable VAT" logic, and most importantly: how VAT flows into your payout and how to place it correctly in your profit calculation. To play with the numbers, you can use the VAT Calculator tool.

2026 VAT rates

As of 2026, three VAT rates are in force in Türkiye: the general 20%, the reduced 10% and the super-reduced 1%. Knowing which one applies to the product you sell is the first step of any VAT calculation, because if your sales and purchase rates differ from each other, your tax burden changes.

The vast majority of items you sell in e-commerce fall in the 20% band. When in doubt, verify your product's actual rate with your accountant or against the Revenue Administration's current list — an invoice issued at the wrong rate causes problems for both you and the buyer.

How VAT works: output − deductible

VAT is a consumption tax; the final burden is carried by the consumer, and the seller acts only as an intermediary (a collector). It revolves around two concepts:

• Output VAT (collected): the VAT you take from the customer within the price when you sell the product. This is not your income; you owe it to the state.
• Deductible VAT (paid): the VAT you pay to your supplier when buying the product and on the services you use for the business (commission, shipping, advertising). You have the right to deduct this from what you owe the state.

At month-end the formula is clear: Payable VAT = Output VAT − Deductible VAT. In other words, what you pay the state out of your own pocket is actually the tax on the value you add to the product. If the VAT you collect is more than the VAT you pay, you settle the difference with your return; if it is less, the difference is carried over to the next month as carried-forward VAT (we will come back to this below).

VAT on a Trendyol sale: it is inside the price

The critical difference in marketplace selling: the sale price you enter on Trendyol is VAT-inclusive. So for a 1.200 TL product at 20% VAT, the price splits into three parts:

• Tax base (VAT-exclusive price): 1.200 / 1,20 = 1.000 TL
• Output VAT: 1.000 × 20% = 200 TL (not yours, the state's)

Trendyol collects this 200 TL from the customer and passes it to you within your payout; but you will pay it to the state on your next VAT return. The income that stays in your pocket is the 1.000 TL tax base, not 1.200 TL. From a practical seller's standpoint, this is the sentence to memorize: the VAT that reaches you inside your payout is money held in trust that you keep only for a short while.

The VAT on commission, shipping and service invoices works in your favor

The good news: the VAT on the invoices Trendyol issues to you is your deductible VAT. The 20% VAT inside the commission invoice (the invoice is issued VAT-inclusive), the VAT on the shipping fee, the VAT on the platform service fee and on your advertising spend — you deduct all of them from your output VAT on your return. So the commission's VAT is deducted from your payout up front, but on the tax side it does not disappear; it reduces the VAT you will pay. The same applies to the VAT on the invoice from the supplier you buy the product from. That is why, in e-commerce, getting an invoice for every expense is directly a cash matter: you cannot deduct the VAT on goods you buy without an invoice, and that VAT comes out of your own pocket.

How do you place VAT in your profit calculation?

The most common mistake is to record the VAT-inclusive sale price as income and the VAT-inclusive costs as expenses and then call the result "profit." The right way: calculate profit with VAT-exclusive (tax base) amounts and track VAT in a separate account. Let's look at it through a 1.200 TL product at 20% VAT that was bought from the supplier for 600 TL (VAT-inclusive):

The VAT column on the right is a separate ledger: on this sale you owe the state a net 60 TL of VAT (other deductible VAT — shipping, service fees, advertising — reduces this amount further). Your profit, on the other hand, lives in the VAT-exclusive world on the left: 1.000 − 500 − 200 = 300 TL gross profit, and once shipping, service fees and withholding tax come out of it, you arrive at net profit. If you mix the two worlds, you will either see your profit as higher than it is or, when the return month arrives, ask "where did this VAT come from?" To see the real net profit per sale without VAT getting in the way, use the Trendyol Profit Calculator tool; we explained the full logic step by step in the Trendyol real profit calculation article.

When does a VAT refund come into play in e-commerce?

For some sellers, output VAT stays consistently below deductible VAT and carried-forward VAT builds up. This usually happens to those who sell reduced-rate products: for example, if you sell a product at 1% or 10% VAT but pay 20% VAT on inputs like packaging, shipping, commission and advertising, the VAT you collect ends up less than what you pay, and the difference keeps carrying over. This is exactly where the VAT refund on reduced-rate transactions comes in:

• The portion of VAT arising from reduced-rate sales that cannot be relieved through deduction, exceeding the lower limit set for the year, can be refunded. For 2026 this lower limit has been updated to 164.000 TL; only the portion above this amount is subject to a refund.
• During the year the refund is taken by offset (by applying it against your own tax/premium debts), and in the following year, on request, either in cash or by offset.

For a typical e-commerce seller operating at the general rate (buying at 20% and selling at 20%), a refund usually does not come up; for them, VAT is more a matter of cash flow and correct set-off. The refund process is a technical task requiring documents and lists — if you sell at reduced rates, rather than letting your carried-forward VAT pile up and waiting, evaluate your refund entitlement with your accountant.

Return calendar and cash planning

Your VAT liability is settled each period through a return. An e-commerce seller operating under the actual/balance-sheet method declares VAT monthly; the return is filed in the month following the relevant period, and the accrued tax is paid within that same period. The cash trap here is this: the money for an order may reach you late because of payment terms, but that sale's VAT is declared according to the period in which the invoice was issued. So you may have to declare and pay a sale's VAT before you have even received your payout. That is why, if you spend the VAT you collect as "income," you will face a debt with no matching cash in the return month. Practical rule: set aside the difference between output VAT and deductible VAT as a separate line item — that money is not yours.

Let's also clarify one distinction: VAT must not be confused with withholding tax. The 1% withholding tax that Trendyol deducts from your payout is an advance payment of income/corporate tax and is calculated on the VAT-exclusive amount; VAT, on the other hand, is an entirely separate tax that runs on its own return. The two sit in different ledgers and are not offset against each other.

Three common mistakes

• Recording VAT-inclusive revenue as income: 200 TL of a 1.200 TL sale is VAT held in trust. Looking at revenue and thinking you have grown turns into a cash shortage in the return month.
• Buying without an invoice: you cannot deduct the VAT on goods you buy from a supplier without an invoice; that VAT gets buried in your cost and eats into your profit. An invoice for every input means deductible VAT.
• Penalizing the commission's VAT twice: the commission's VAT is deducted from your payout but is also deductible on your return. In your profit calculation, record the commission as an expense at its VAT-exclusive (tax base) amount; track the VAT as a separate deductible line, otherwise you end up deducting the same tax twice.

In short, when set up correctly, VAT is a trust-and-offset mechanism that affects not your profit but only your cash flow and timing. When set up wrongly, it both makes your profit look higher than it is and catches you unprepared in the return month.

Don't leave VAT to guesswork

In summary: your sale price is VAT-inclusive, and that VAT is not your income; the VAT on commission, shipping and service invoices, meanwhile, lowers the tax you will pay. Always calculate your profit VAT-exclusive and track VAT separately. Keeping this distinction by hand across hundreds of orders is hard; when you connect your Trendyol account, Verimle separates your sales and the VAT on your Trendyol invoices and builds your profit calculation on the VAT-exclusive tax base. To see the number on a single sale, start with the VAT Calculator tool, then look at your net profit with the Trendyol Profit Calculator tool.

One final reminder: this article is for general information purposes. VAT rates, withholding (tevkifat) and exemption rules change with legislation and vary depending on the product sold or the type of transaction; therefore the information here does not replace official legislation or the opinion of an accountant. For current rates and regulations, the official source is the Revenue Administration. To confirm — in a binding manner — the VAT rate for your own products and situation and how withholding and exemptions apply, be sure to consult your own accountant (SMMM); do not treat this guide as binding tax advice. If you want to try the numbers for your own product, you can use the VAT Calculator tool. This guide was reviewed on July 18, 2026.