Crypto Tax in Georgia: Individuals, Entrepreneurs and Companies

The country of Georgia has not written a tax law for crypto. What a reader finds instead is a public ruling issued by the Minister of Finance on 28 June 2019, which exempts from income tax what an individual earns from selling a crypto-asset and keeps the exchange of crypto for money outside VAT, plus general rules that apply to everything the ruling does not mention. That is a favourable position, and a narrower one than the phrase "crypto is tax-free in Georgia" suggests. It covers a sale by a person. It does not cover a salary, a fee, a mining operation or a company's profit. It can be amended or withdrawn, and under the Tax Code a public ruling is no longer applied once the provisions it interprets are changed.

Where Georgia's crypto tax rules actually come from

An individual who sells crypto-assets: the 2019 exemption

The ruling reasons from the source rules. A resident individual is exempt on income that is not from a Georgian source, and nothing in the Code's list of Georgian-source income names crypto. A crypto-asset has no physical form, is not located anywhere, is not held on an account at a financial institution and as a rule has no identifiable issuer, so the place of a sale cannot be established and the activity is treated as not carried on in Georgia. The ruling therefore concludes that income received by a natural person from the supply of a crypto-asset is exempt from income tax. It says natural person, without separating residents from non-residents or occasional investors from frequent traders.

The limits of the 2019 ruling

• It speaks of a supply: selling a crypto-asset or exchanging it for lari or foreign currency. It does not discuss swapping one token for another, staking or lending rewards, airdrops or NFTs.
• It defines a crypto-asset as one issued and exchanged by decentralised consensus, without a central trusted issuer or supervisor. A token with an identifiable issuer fits that definition, and the reasoning built on it, less comfortably.
• It deals with the sale of the asset, not with how you came to hold it. Tokens received as pay for work or services are income of that kind first.
• It is silent on income tax for mining and on companies. Its only words on mining concern VAT on computing power.
• It dates from 2019, and a public ruling is not applied once the provisions it was issued on are amended or repealed. The VAT articles it cites were replaced in 2020; the income tax provisions it relies on read the same today on our comparison, not on the Revenue Service's word. Before a large disposal, ask for the current position in writing; the Revenue Service may issue an advance tax ruling on a specific transaction.

An individual entrepreneur: trading and services paid in crypto

The first situation is an entrepreneur who does ordinary work and is offered payment in tokens. The form of payment does not change the income: the Tax Code taxes income earned in any form, so this is business income from a service performed in Georgia, taxed at 1% of turnover if the entrepreneur holds Small Business status for an eligible activity, or under the general rules if not. Before the tax question there is a legal one, dealt with below: the prohibition on payments in virtual assets.

The second is a person who trades crypto as a business and asks whether Small Business status fits. The 2019 ruling does not answer that. The status taxes turnover from economic activity and excludes a list of activities that, as our article on Small Business status sets out, includes currency exchange and anything that needs a licence or permit. Whether the Revenue Service would treat it as eligible turnover at 1%, as an individual's exempt sale under the ruling, or as an excluded activity is a classification to obtain in writing before the first declaration.

A company: profit tax on distribution, VAT on exchange and mining

A Georgian company that trades or holds crypto is taxed like any other Georgian company. Profit tax at 15% applies when profit is distributed or treated as distributed, not when a position is closed, so gains kept inside the company are not taxed until they leave, and 5% is withheld from a dividend paid to an individual, both rates as they stand at the time of writing. The 2019 ruling plays no part here: it is written for natural persons. Our complete guide to taxation in Georgia covers what counts as a distribution.

The Code itself now says that money and crypto-assets are not goods and that transferring ownership of either is not a service, so exchanging crypto for currency is outside VAT. Mining is different: a miner sells computing power to a pool or a customer. The 2019 ruling treats that as an electronically supplied service located where the recipient is. Supplied to a recipient registered abroad, with no place of management or permanent establishment in Georgia connected with the service, it is outside Georgian VAT. Supplied to a recipient registered in Georgia it is taxable, at 18% at the time of writing. In both cases the ruling lets the supplier deduct input VAT. The VAT provisions it cites were replaced in 2020, so this part may no longer apply as written; confirm it before equipment is bought.

Paying and being paid in crypto: the National Bank law

The Organic Law on the National Bank states that the lari is the only legal tender in Georgia outside the exceptions it lists, that a virtual asset is not legal tender, and that payments with virtual assets are prohibited except in cases the National Bank defines as necessary for providing virtual asset services. On that text, as we read it, a salary in Georgia is paid in money, not in tokens, and a Georgian business should not assume that it may accept tokens for goods or services. How the prohibition applies to a payment arriving from a foreign client is a question for the National Bank's own acts and for advice on the facts. If tokens do reach an employee from an employer, treat them as salary unless advised otherwise: the Labour Code counts pay in cash or in kind as remuneration, and salary income is taxed at the general rate.

Banks, source of funds and the home country

• Banks: as our article on virtual asset service provider registration says, Georgian banks apply their own narrow appetite to crypto. In practice a bank asked to receive the proceeds of a sale wants the trail: exchange statements, purchase records, wallet history and the source of the money that bought the asset.
• Registration: providing exchange, transfer or custody for other people as a business needs registration with the National Bank. Trading or mining on your own account usually does not.
• The home country: the Georgian exemption follows from Georgian source rules and binds only Georgia. A country that still treats you as its resident will usually tax the gain under its own law.
• Reporting: on the OECD's list dated 14 September 2026, 77 jurisdictions had committed to exchange crypto-asset data under its reporting framework from 2027, 2028 or 2029. Georgia appeared on that list as relevant but not yet committed. Check where your own country stands.

What this article does not answer

It does not tell you how the Revenue Service treats staking, lending, airdrops, token swaps, NFTs or income from mining by an individual, because no published position we could read addresses them; the general rules apply and should be confirmed case by case. It does not say whether trading as an individual entrepreneur fits Small Business status. It does not cover the accounting of crypto in a company's books or your home country. We register companies and entrepreneurs and scope the regulatory perimeter; for an uncertain tax position the proper instrument is a written ruling from the Revenue Service.