Annual Financial Reporting in Georgia: Size Categories, Standards and the 1 October Deadline

A company in the country of Georgia owes two kinds of annual account, and founders regularly know only one. Tax returns go to the Revenue Service. Financial statements go to a different body, the Service for Accounting, Reporting and Auditing Supervision, through its reporting portal, no later than 1 October of the following year. The duty does not depend on turnover: a company with no activity files too. What depends on size is everything else, from the accounting standard and the audit to the publicity and the fine.

Who has to file, and with whom

The rules sit in the Law of Georgia on Accounting, Reporting and Audit. Its supervisor, usually shortened to SARAS, is a state sub-agency within the system of the Ministry of Finance; it sets the filing rules, runs the reporting portal at reportal.ge and imposes the fines. The Law applies to every legal entity under private law, so every LLC and joint stock company is inside it from registration. A branch of a foreign company and an individual entrepreneur are inside it only once they are large enough to count as a third-category enterprise or above. Non-commercial legal entities keep accounts but do not submit statements, and budgetary organisations and the National Bank of Georgia are outside the Law.

The four size categories and their thresholds

Four details decide close cases. Revenue, for this test, is income from the main activity, the sale of goods and services, without indirect taxes, trade discounts and amounts collected on behalf of others, and as a rule without dividends, interest and royalties. A company changes category only when it has been outside its thresholds at the end of two consecutive reporting periods, unless it has jumped two or more categories in one year. A parent company measures its group on consolidated figures. And a public interest entity, which is how the Law describes banks, microbanks, microfinance organisations, insurers, listed companies and a few other kinds of business, carries the first-category regime as a rule, with a narrow exception for some of the smallest.

Which standard and which audit each category carries

A company may choose a higher standard than its category requires, so a fourth-category company owned by a group that reports under IFRS can prepare its Georgian statements the same way, but it may not choose a lower one. The audit exemption for the third and fourth categories applies unless other legislation requires an audit, and the Law extends the audit duty to a subsidiary within a group, so a small Georgian company owned by a larger group should confirm its position instead of assuming the exemption. The books themselves must be kept through an employed accountant or an outside accountant, accounting firm or audit firm, and outside accountants and accounting firms have to be entered in registers that the Service keeps. Checking that register takes a minute and is worth doing before the engagement letter is signed.

How the filing works on the reporting portal

1. 1

   Close the year. Statements are prepared at least once a year under the standard for the company's category, and the company stays responsible for them even when an outside accountant prepares them.

2. 2

   Register the company in the portal's filing system. At the time of writing a new registration identifies the company with its Revenue Service e-services user name and password and creates the administrator of its page, who can then add other users, for example the accountant. A company has one administrator at a time.

3. 3

   Enter total assets, revenue and average headcount. The portal works out the size category and shows the standard, the audit duty and the deadline that follow from it.

4. 4

   Complete the digital forms. A fourth-category company that reports under its own standard files only these forms, without uploading a document; larger categories add the statements themselves, and an audited company adds its auditor, who confirms the filing on the portal before it reaches the Service. The filing rule gives the auditor five working days, and the report counts as submitted only once the auditor has confirmed it, so an audited company cannot leave this to the last days of September.

5. 5

   Send it no later than 1 October and keep the confirmation; where the last day is a non-working day, the filing rule moves it to the next working day. If the Service finds a defect in what was filed, it sets a period of up to 10 working days for correcting it.

What a company with no activity still files

The supervisor answers this question on its own site, and the answer is short: an entity other than a non-commercial legal entity submits its statements no later than 1 October, and a company that is not operating is not excepted. A newly registered LLC with a bank account and a registration cost has a balance sheet even if it never issued an invoice. The filing is small, because a fourth-category company that reports under its own standard completes the digital forms without uploading a document. The portal records the company as a going concern by default, and that status may be changed where, under the standard applied, the company is no longer a going concern when it files. Our article on a company with no activity covers the tax returns that run alongside.

What missing 1 October costs

The Law fixes the fine by category: GEL 500 for a fourth-category enterprise, GEL 1,000 for the third, GEL 5,000 for the second and GEL 10,000 for the first category and for public interest entities, at the time of writing. The Service may issue a written warning in place of the fine, with a period of at least a month to comply. Not complying after a fine may double it, and a company that does not report for two consecutive periods can, after the doubled fine, be fined five times the amount for its category. The Service decides whom to pursue from a risk system fed with Revenue Service data, so a registered company that has not filed is visible to it. Its decisions can be challenged before the Board attached to the Service and in court, and a challenge does not suspend the decision. A fining decision sent through the portal counts as served when it is opened. If receipt is not confirmed, the Service may publish it on the portal 20 working days after signing it, and it then counts as served on the tenth calendar day after publication; a fine for a missed filing is first passed to the Revenue Service, which informs the company by a compulsory notification. On 11 September 2026 the Service published draft amendments to this Law for comment. That is a proposal, not law: the amounts above are those of the text in force, and should be checked again when it matters. The larger cost is usually indirect: a bank or a buyer that looks the company up and finds nothing filed.

What this article does not answer

How a particular transaction is measured under IFRS for SMEs or under the fourth-category standard is an accounting question for a qualified accountant. Banks, payment providers, lenders, insurers and other supervised businesses report to their own supervisor under additional rules. Consolidated statements for groups, the contents of the management report and the report on payments to the state that extractive businesses file are outside this piece. And the Georgian filing says nothing about the owner's own country: a foreign parent or shareholder may have to include the Georgian company in accounts or disclosures at home under that country's rules. We can tell you which category the company is in and what follows from it; the figures are the accountant's.