Turkey Cuts FX Purchase Tax in a New Step to Normalization
- Turkey also lowers witholding tax on lira savings accounts
- Lira jumps as much as 0.6% following the tax changes
Customers wearing protective face masks exit a Bureau de Change currency and gold exchange shop in the Grand Bazaar, in Istanbul.
Photographer: Nicole Tung/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Turkey cut a tax on foreign-currency purchases, its latest step to ease market restrictions that hurt investor sentiment and failed to curb the lira’s decline.
The tax on retail purchases of foreign currency, including gold, has been reduced to 0.2% from 1%, according to a presidential decree published in the country’s official gazette on Wednesday. The levy was reintroduced in 2019 to increase budget revenue and was raised earlier this year amid the Covid-19 pandemic.