Living in Georgia as a Foreigner: What the Country Offers and the Four Questions to Keep Apart

The country of Georgia offers a foreigner four things at once: easy entry, with many nationalities allowed to stay up to a year without a visa at the time of writing; a tax system that is low but ordinary, with company profit taxed at 15% only when distributed and personal income taxed at 20% on a territorial basis; a company that a foreigner may own in full and set up without visiting; and property and family routes that are open rather than exceptional. What it does not offer is a single status that answers everything. The right to be here, the right to work here, where you pay tax and how you hold your business and property are four separate legal questions, decided by different authorities under different acts. Newcomers who keep them apart plan well; those who run them together discover the gaps at the border, at the bank or in a tax return.

What draws founders, remote workers, investors and families

• Easy entry. Citizens of many countries enter without a visa and may stay for up to one year at the time of writing. For many newcomers that is the whole immigration answer for the first year; the Law's own default for visa-exempt aliens is 90 days in any 180, and the full year applies to the countries on the Government's list.
• A low, ordinary tax system. Company profit is taxed at 15% when distributed, dividends carry 5%, VAT is 18% once a company is registered for it, and salaries carry 20%. An individual entrepreneur with Small Business status pays 1% of turnover within the cap. Georgia is not a tax haven: as checked in October 2026, it is on neither the EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions nor the FATF lists, and it exchanges tax and bank information with other states.
• A company in a day, from anywhere. A foreigner may own 100% of a Georgian LLC, be its only director and register it through a representative without entering the country; the registry decides in about a day.
• Property in your own name. Foreign individuals and companies buy apartments, houses, commercial premises and non-agricultural land directly; agricultural land is restricted and the current rules are confirmed case by case.
• A route for families. A spouse and children join a permit holder through family reunification, and on the property and investment routes they receive the same permit as the principal.

Two practical facts shape everything below. The official language is Georgian, so every foreign document that goes to an authority ends in a certified Georgian translation, and the lari is the only legal tender outside the exceptions the law lists, so salaries, rent and tax are, as a rule, settled in GEL. Neither is a difficulty; both are time that belongs in the plan.

The four questions newcomers run together

The right to be here is a period of stay, not a residence

For nationals of the listed countries, lawful presence for the first year needs no application at all. That is why a residence permit in Georgia is usually about something other than presence: a residence card that banks and landlords recognise, an end to the annual reset at the border, the ability to bring a family, and a path to permanent residence. The routes are a work residence permit through your own company or an employer, a one-year permit on real property with a market value above USD 150,000, an investment permit from USD 300,000, and family reunification. Each has conditions and a file, and the Public Service Development Agency decides on documents rather than intentions. The founders' residence permit guide on this site sets them out.

The right to work is a separate decision since 1 March 2026

Being allowed to stay is not being allowed to work. Since 1 March 2026 a foreigner who carries on activity in Georgia, as an employee or in their own name as an individual entrepreneur or the manager of a small company, needs the right to work under the Law on Labour Migration, held together with a residence permit or a D1 visa, unless one of the Law's exemptions applies. At the time of writing the exemptions include holders of an investment residence permit, work or services for a non-resident connected with that non-resident's activity outside Georgia, and managers of first to third category enterprises; the Government's rule withholds the non-resident-client exemption from an individual entrepreneur who needs a residence permit to stay. The right to work is applied for personally and decided within 30 calendar days, and the permit is then applied for within 10 calendar days. Only permanent residence puts a person outside the Law altogether.

Where you pay tax follows your days, not your company

Owning a Georgian company does not make you a Georgian tax resident, and holding a residence permit does not either. An individual becomes resident for the whole of a tax year by being actually present in Georgia for 183 days or more in any continuous 12-month period ending in that year, counted by the Revenue Service against border records, with a separate high-net-worth route granted one year at a time. A resident pays 20% on Georgian-source income and is exempt on foreign-source income: dividends from a foreign company, interest from a foreign bank, rent from property abroad and gains on foreign assets are outside Georgian tax at the time of writing. The sentence that surprises remote workers is the mirror image: work done at a desk in Tbilisi is Georgian-source income whoever pays for it, taxed at 20% and declared in an annual return before 1 April of the following year. The country you left keeps its own claim until its own tests release you; a treaty decides between two claims only when it is invoked with a tax residency certificate. The article on Georgian tax residency covers the count and the certificate.

How you hold the business and the property

Two forms carry almost every foreigner's business here. An individual entrepreneur is you, with unlimited liability; with Small Business status the turnover is taxed at 1% up to GEL 500,000 a year, rising to 3% from the start of the month in which the cap is passed, and the regime excludes consulting, legal, medical and several other services, so whether your work qualifies is settled in writing first. An LLC is a separate legal person whose profit is taxed at 15% only when distributed, with 5% withheld from the dividend, so GEL 100,000 of profit paid out in full to an individual owner leaves GEL 80,750. Companies alone may hold the Virtual Zone, International Company and Free Industrial Zone statuses, each with its own substance test. Property is registered at the National Agency of Public Registry in your name or your company's, and registration is what makes you the owner. An individual's rent from a Georgian property is taxed at 20%, or 5% on residential rent without deductions, at the time of writing. The complete guide to taxation carries the detail; every figure here is confirmed against the Tax Code before anyone relies on it.

What this article does not answer

It does not compare the residence permit routes in detail, explain how the 183 days are counted around transit and treatment, or walk through registering a company: the deeper articles named above do that, and the rest of the Living in Georgia section covers the visa-free year, the first 90 days, property, families and renting. It states no cost of living, no rent level and no safety claim, because we have no source we would sign. It does not advise on the tax of the country you are leaving. We register companies and individual entrepreneurs, prepare right-to-work, residence permit and bank files, and set out in writing how the Georgian rules apply to your income and property; we do not open bank accounts, and nobody, including us, can promise a permit, a status or an account.