Most expats arrive in Tbilisi having read that Georgia taxes foreign income at zero. Then a payment lands, an accountant asks a question, and the certainty evaporates. Personal income tax in Georgia for expats runs on two numbers and one rule: a flat 20%, a 183-day residency test, and a definition of Georgian-source income that quietly decides everything. Here is how the three fit together.
The flat rate, and why the rate is the easy part
Georgia charges individuals a single rate. Article 81(1) of the Tax Code of Georgia taxes a natural person's taxable income at 20%, unless the Code says otherwise. There are no progressive bands and no general personal allowance.
The Code says otherwise fairly often, though. Several common income types sit well below 20%, and a few sit at zero. The rate you actually pay depends on what the money is and where it came from, not on how much of it there is.
| Income type | Rate | Who it hits | How it is paid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salary and general taxable income | 20% | Residents and non-residents on Georgian-source income | Withheld by the payer, or self-declared |
| Residential rent, no deductions claimed | 5% | Individual landlords who elect it | Annual return |
| Sale of a home, attached land or a vehicle inside the taxable window | 5% | Individual sellers | Annual return |
| Dividends from a Georgian company | 5% | Individual shareholders | Withheld at source, final |
| Interest paid by a Georgian payer | 5% | Individuals | Withheld at source, final |
| Small business status turnover | 1%, rising to 3% above GEL 500,000 | Registered individual entrepreneurs | Monthly |
| Micro business status turnover | 0% | Individuals with no employees, under GEL 30,000 a year | Annual return |
Those rates come straight from Articles 81, 84, 90, 130 and 131. They have been stable for years, but tax law moves, so treat the table as a map rather than a guarantee and confirm your own numbers with an advisor before you plan around them.
Are you a Georgian tax resident?
Article 34(2) makes you a Georgian resident for the whole tax year if you were physically in Georgia for 183 days or more in any continuous 12-calendar-month period ending in that year. Read that twice. The window is rolling, not the calendar year, so a stay that straddles New Year can trigger residency in the second year.
Two details catch people out. Any part of a day counts as a full day under Article 34(5). And under Article 34(3), time you spend outside Georgia specifically for treatment, leisure, business trips or education still counts as time in Georgia, which makes short trips out of the country a weak way to break the count.
Running the other direction, Article 34(4)(d) says days you spend in Georgia purely for treatment or leisure do not count towards the total. A genuine tourist does not accidentally become a resident. Someone living and working here does. The full mechanics, including the high net worth individual route under Article 34(6), are covered in our guide to the 183-day residency test.
The source rule that decides everything
Here is the part that most English-language explainers skip. Article 82(1)(u) exempts income received by a resident individual that is not Georgian-source income. That is the famous territorial system, and it is real.
The catch is the definition of Georgian-source income in Article 104(1). Under 104(1)(a), income earned from employment in Georgia is Georgian-source. Under 104(1)(c.a), services are treated as delivered in Georgia when they are actually rendered in Georgia. Neither clause asks where your client sits or which country the money is wired from.
If you are physically in Tbilisi doing the work, the income can be Georgian-source under Article 104 even though the payer, the bank and the contract are all foreign. "Foreign client" is not the same thing as "foreign source". Get a written position from a Georgian advisor before you file on the assumption that your remote income is exempt.
The exemption does real work for passive and offshore income: dividends from a company abroad, gains on foreign securities, rent from a flat in another country, a pension paid from overseas. It does much less work for a laptop worker sitting in Vake.
If you are on a Georgian payroll
An employer in Georgia is a tax agent. It withholds 20% from your gross salary and reports the amounts paid and withheld to the Revenue Service by the 15th of the following month, under Article 153(5). You generally file nothing yourself, because Article 153(1)(a) only requires a return from residents whose income was not taxed at source in Georgia.
There is a payroll wrinkle worth checking on your first payslip. Georgia's mandatory funded pension takes 2% from the employee and 2% from the employer, with a state top-up of 2% on taxable salary up to GEL 24,000 a year and 1% on the band between GEL 24,000 and GEL 60,000. But the Law of Georgia on Funded Pension applies to Georgian citizens other than non-resident individuals, and to foreigners permanently residing in Georgia.
In practice that means a foreign national without permanent residence status is usually outside the mandatory scheme. We see payslips every year where the 2% was deducted anyway. If your status changed because you picked up a Georgian residence permit, the answer can change with it, so ask your payroll provider in Tbilisi to show you which rule they applied.
If you invoice rather than draw a salary
Foreigners can register as an individual entrepreneur in Georgia and apply for small business status. Article 90 taxes that turnover at 1%, rising to 3% for the rest of the calendar year once gross income from economic activity passes GEL 500,000. The threshold is GEL 700,000 for wine tourism and agrotourism operators.
Micro business status under Article 84 taxes turnover at 0% for individuals who use no hired labour and expect under GEL 30,000 of gross income in the year. Both statuses exclude certain activities, and both are granted by the Revenue Service rather than assumed.
Small business status is the single most common reason expats end up paying 1% rather than 20%, and it has enough disqualifying edge cases to deserve its own read: see our breakdown of Georgia's 1% small business status. The choice between operating personally and operating through a company is a separate decision, laid out in LLC versus individual entrepreneur.
Rent, property sales and the 5% elections
Article 81(2) lets an individual who rents residential space out for residential use pay 5% on the income, on condition that no deductions are claimed against it. Article 81(5) hands the registration procedure for that treatment to the Minister of Finance, so it is an election you make, not a rate that arrives on its own.
Selling matters too. Article 81(3) taxes the surplus from selling a residential apartment or house with its attached land, or a vehicle, at 5%. Article 82(1)(f) then exempts that surplus entirely once the home has been owned for more than two years, or the vehicle for more than six months after title registration. Timing a sale around those two dates is one of the cheapest planning moves available to an expat owner.
Annual property tax is a separate charge with its own family-income thresholds, and we cover it in property taxes and fees in Georgia.
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Filing: who declares, and when
Article 153(1) sets one deadline that matters to individuals. The income tax return is due to the tax authority before 1 April of the year following the reporting year. Georgia does not run a separate expat filing calendar.
Who has to file is narrower than people expect. Resident individuals file if their income was not taxed at a Georgian source. Non-residents without a permanent establishment file if their Georgian-source income was not taxed at source. If every lari you earned was already withheld by a Georgian tax agent, there is usually nothing to file.
| Your setup | Headline rate | Who withholds | Annual return |
|---|---|---|---|
| Employed by a Georgian company | 20% on salary | Your employer, monthly | Usually none |
| Individual entrepreneur, small business status | 1% of turnover | Nobody; you report monthly | Not for the turnover tax |
| Paid directly by a foreign client for work done in Georgia | 20% | Nobody | Yes, before 1 April |
| Georgian company paying you a dividend | 5% | The company | None for the dividend |
| Renting out a Tbilisi flat, 5% election | 5% | Nobody | Yes, before 1 April |
Filing happens through the Revenue Service portal at eservices.rs.ge, which needs a Georgian personal number and an SMS second factor. The interface is Georgian-first, and the English version lags on some forms.
Get your personal number and portal login working in January, not in the last week of March. Resetting a lost login requires a visit in person, and that queue is at its worst right before the deadline.
Where your home country still has a claim
Paying 20%, 5% or 1% in Georgia does not automatically end your obligations elsewhere. The Ministry of Finance of Georgia lists 58 double taxation treaties in force, covering most of Western Europe, the Gulf, and a large part of Asia.
Treaties allocate taxing rights and relieve double taxation. They do not delete a home-country filing duty, and citizenship-based systems such as the United States keep taxing regardless of where you live. Our guide to Georgia's double taxation treaties walks through how tie-breaker clauses and residency certificates actually work in practice.
What the English Tax Code will not tell you
The consolidated English translation published on the Legislative Herald is useful and out of date. The English version currently online reflects a consolidation from late 2023, while the Georgian consolidation runs to 25 June 2026.
The gap is not academic. The GEL 700,000 small business threshold for wine tourism and agrotourism appears in the Georgian text and not in the English one. If an English-language source quotes an article number at you, the safe move is to have someone read the Georgian version of that article before you act on it. That is exactly the kind of check a competent tax advisor in Tbilisi does as a matter of routine, and it is a reasonable thing to ask about when you interview one.
Key takeaways
- Georgia taxes individual income at a flat 20% under Article 81(1), with 5% rates for residential rent, dividends, interest and some property sales.
- Residency is 183 days or more in any continuous 12-month period ending in the tax year, counted on a rolling basis.
- Foreign-source income of a Georgian resident is exempt, but Article 104 treats work physically performed in Georgia as Georgian-source.
- Small business status caps tax at 1% of turnover up to GEL 500,000, and micro business status is 0% under GEL 30,000.
- Georgian payroll withholds monthly, and the mandatory pension generally does not apply to foreigners without permanent residence.
- The annual return is due before 1 April, and only if your income was not already taxed at source in Georgia.
FAQ
What is the personal income tax rate in Georgia for expats?
The general rate is a flat 20% on taxable income, set by Article 81(1) of the Tax Code. Expats are not taxed at a different rate from Georgian citizens. Lower rates of 5% apply to residential rent, dividends, interest and certain property sales, and registered small businesses pay 1% of turnover.
Do expats pay Georgian tax on foreign income?
Georgian tax residents are exempt on income that is not Georgian-source, under Article 82(1)(u). The question is what counts as foreign-source. Article 104 treats employment carried out in Georgia and services actually rendered in Georgia as Georgian-source, regardless of where the client or the bank sits, so remote work performed from Tbilisi is not automatically exempt.
How many days make you a Georgian tax resident?
183 days or more of physical presence in any continuous 12-calendar-month period ending in the tax year, under Article 34(2). Part days count as full days. Once you cross the line, you are treated as resident for the entire tax year, not just from day 183.
Does holding a residence permit make me a tax resident?
No. Tax residency under Article 34 is a day-count and presence test, and it runs independently of your immigration status. You can hold a residence permit and be a non-resident for tax, or hold no permit at all and be a tax resident. The two systems answer different questions.
Do I owe Georgian tax if I work remotely from Tbilisi for a foreign employer?
Very possibly, yes. Article 104(1)(a) and (c.a) treat employment and services performed in Georgia as Georgian-source, so the foreign identity of your employer does not settle it. This is the most commonly misreported position we see, and it is worth a paid hour with an advisor rather than a forum answer.
Do foreign employees have to pay into Georgia's funded pension?
Usually not. The Law on Funded Pension applies to Georgian citizens other than non-resident individuals, and to foreigners permanently residing in Georgia, so a foreign national without permanent residence normally falls outside the mandatory 2% contribution. Check your payslip anyway, because deductions get applied by default more often than they should.
When is the Georgian income tax return due?
Before 1 April of the year following the reporting year, under Article 153(1). There is no separate deadline for foreigners. Employers separately report salaries and withheld tax by the 15th of the month after the payroll month.
How is rental income taxed for expats in Georgia?
An individual renting residential space out for residential use can pay 5% on the gross income, provided no deductions are claimed against it, under Article 81(2). The treatment is an election with a registration procedure set by the Minister of Finance, not an automatic rate. Commercial letting and short-term rental businesses follow different rules.
Can foreigners get small business status in Georgia?
Yes. Small business status attaches to a registered individual entrepreneur, and foreign nationals can register as one. The 1% rate applies to turnover up to GEL 500,000 in a calendar year, above which the rate becomes 3% for the remainder of that year. Certain activities are excluded, so confirm your activity code before you rely on it.
Will Georgia tax me again on a dividend from my Georgian company?
No. Article 130 taxes dividends paid by a resident company to an individual at 5% at source, and Article 130(3) confirms that a resident individual's already-taxed dividend is not added to gross income or taxed again. Your home country may still tax the same dividend, subject to any treaty.
Do I need to file a return if my Georgian salary is already taxed?
Generally no. Article 153(1)(a) only requires a return from resident individuals whose income was not taxed at a Georgian source. If your only income is a salary that your employer has already withheld tax on, there is normally nothing to file. Any untaxed income, such as rent or foreign-paid consulting, brings the filing duty back. An accountant in Tbilisi can confirm which side of that line you sit on.