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. Enforcement, not the rate, is what has tightened — the Revenue Service now assesses the substance of the activity rather than the label the taxpayer puts on it.
1% of gross turnover on up to roughly USD 185,000 a year is among the lowest effective rates available anywhere in a non-blacklisted, treaty-networked jurisdiction with normal banking. For a founder or consultant it is genuinely excellent. For a UHNW family it is usually a rounding error — the reason to understand it is that it is routinely mis-sold as a wealth-structuring tool when it is 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.
- Timeline
- 1–1 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 — which 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 Hallapply to the Revenue Service for Small Business Statusturnover under GEL 500,000activity not on the prohibited listmonthly turnover declarations and use of a registered cash register where applicable
- 1% IS OF GROSS TURNOVER, NOT PROFIT. No expenses are deductible. On a low-margin business the effective rate on profit can exceed the standard 20%.
- THE PROHIBITED-ACTIVITY LIST IS BROAD AND CATCHES MOST PROFESSIONALS. Consulting of most kinds, legal, accounting, tax and financial advisory, medical, architectural services, banking, insurance, gambling, real-estate brokerage, staffing and any licensed activity are excluded. The Revenue Service tests what you actually do, not how you invoice it. Many foreign 'consultants' holding the status are not entitled to it.
- THE FOREIGN-SOURCE ILLUSION. Georgia is territorial, but income is Georgian-source if the work is performed 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 sit in Tbilisi and invoice New York, that is Georgian-source income.
- BREACHING THE CEILING IS PUNITIVE. Exceed GEL 500k and the rate goes to 3% on income from that point to 31 December. Exceed it in two consecutive years and the status is revoked from 1 January of the third year, dropping you to 20% on net profit.
- Georgia exchanges under CRS from 2024. The 1% status is visible, and a Georgian tax residency claim supported by a 1% IE registration while you live elsewhere is a straightforward audit target in your actual country of residence.