Georgia · Tax regime
Small Business Status for Individual Entrepreneurs (Tax Code of Georgia)
Open and unchanged in 2026: 1% of gross turnover up to GEL 500,000. It is enforcement, not the rate, that has tightened. The Revenue Service now assesses the substance of the activity rather than the label the taxpayer puts on it.
A rate of 1% on gross turnover up to roughly USD 185,000 a year is among the lowest effective rates you will find anywhere in a non-blacklisted, treaty-networked jurisdiction with normal banking. For a founder or a consultant, that is genuinely excellent. For a UHNW family, it is usually a rounding error. The reason to understand it well is that it gets routinely mis-sold as a wealth-structuring tool, when it is really a small-trader regime with a hard ceiling.
Qualifying routes
1% of gross turnover to GEL 500k; 3% on turnover above that for the remainder of the year
0% on turnover to GEL 30,000, no employees permitted
The facts
- Total landed cost
- Registration is nominal, roughly GEL 20–50. Accounting and monthly filing run USD 50–200 a month.
- Route type
- Tax regime, not a visa
- Timeline
- 1 months (Registration at the Public Service Hall is a same-day or next-day process.)
- Physical presence
- None to register or hold. But performing the work while physically in Georgia makes the income Georgian-source. That is the point of the regime, and the trap in it.
- Family
- Individual only; not a family status
- Permanent residency
- None
- Citizenship
- None
- Language test
- None
- Dual citizenship
- Permitted
- Requirements
- Register as an Individual Entrepreneur at the Public Service Hall.Apply to the Revenue Service for Small Business Status.Turnover under GEL 500,000.Activity not on the prohibited list.Monthly turnover declarations, plus use of a registered cash register where applicable.
- The 1% rate applies to gross turnover, not profit. No expenses are deductible. On a low-margin business, the effective rate on profit can end up higher than the standard 20%.
- The list of prohibited activities is broad, and it catches most professionals. Consulting of most kinds, legal, accounting, tax and financial advisory, medical and architectural services, banking, insurance, gambling, real-estate brokerage, staffing and any licensed activity are all excluded. The Revenue Service looks at what you actually do, not how you word your invoice. Many foreign consultants holding this status are not actually entitled to it.
- The foreign-source illusion. Georgia taxes on a territorial basis, but income counts as Georgian-source if the work is done while you are physically in Georgia, regardless of where the client sits or where the money lands. The common advice that a Georgian resident working remotely for foreign clients earns exempt foreign income is wrong, and the Revenue Service has increased scrutiny of exactly this claim. If you are sitting in Tbilisi and invoicing New York, that is Georgian-source income.
- Breaching the ceiling is punitive. Exceed GEL 500k and the rate jumps to 3% on income from that point through 31 December. Exceed it in two consecutive years and the status is revoked from 1 January of the third year. From there you drop to 20% on net profit.
- Georgia exchanges data under CRS from 2024. The 1% status is visible. A Georgian tax residency claim backed by a 1% IE registration, while you actually live elsewhere, is an easy target for an audit in your real country of residence.