rs.ge for Foreign Founders: Getting Access to the Revenue Service Portal and Knowing What Happens There
A Georgian company's tax life runs through one website, and most foreign founders never see it. How the company gets its credentials, why one phone number carries so much weight, how to give an accountant access without sharing a password, which sections to recognise, and when a message nobody opened still counts as delivered.
rs.ge is the website of the Revenue Service of Georgia. Its authorised user page is where a Georgian company files returns, sees what it owes, issues electronic invoices and waybills, and receives the tax authority's documents. Under the rules in force at the time of writing, a newly registered company's page is activated automatically and the username and password go by text message to the phone number given at registration. From then on the access hangs on those credentials and one Georgian mobile number. A founder who lives abroad does not need to work in the portal. They do need to know who holds the credentials, who reads the messages, and what happens when nobody does.
15th
Day most monthly returns fall due
VAT, payroll and profit tax returns, under the Tax Code at the time of writing
30 days
Before an unopened document can be served publicly
It then counts as delivered on the 20th day after publication
1 number
Mobile phone the access depends on
Login codes and password recovery both run through it
What rs.ge is, and what it is not
The Revenue Service is a legal entity of public law under the Ministry of Finance. Its site has two parts. The public part needs no login: a taxpayer register where anyone can look up a company by name or identification code, other registers, calculators, application forms and a set of video instructions. The second part is the authorised user page, behind a login, and it belongs to one taxpayer. The company record itself is not here: extracts and changes of director sit with the Public Registry. Our article on my.gov.ge explains how the three government portals divide the work. This one stays inside rs.ge.
How a company or an individual entrepreneur gets its credentials
Registration at the Public Registry gives a company its identification number, the number it uses in every return and letter to the tax authority. The Minister of Finance's order on tax administration, in the consolidated version on the Revenue Service's legal hub at the time of writing, says that for an entity entered in the register of entrepreneurs the authorised user page is activated automatically when that number is assigned, and that the username and password are sent by text message to the phone number recorded for the company's Public Registry portal account. So the first question after registration is whose phone received that message. For other taxpayers, and when access has been lost, the order provides an application by video call or in writing. The registration link on the portal's login page leads to the Revenue Service's video-call service, which lists what can be done remotely: activating the authorised user page, changing the contact phone number and recovering the password. The order is amended often, so check the detail against its current text.
- 1
Find the first message. Ask whoever filed the registration which mobile number was given to the Public Registry: the username and password for the tax portal go to it. An individual entrepreneur is entered in the same register, so the same rule should apply; confirm it at registration.
- 2
If the credentials never arrived or are lost, use the video-call page. It has separate entries for a Georgian citizen, a person acting for an organisation, a trusted person acting under a power of attorney, and a natural person without Georgian citizenship. It states its hours as working days, 09:00 to 18:00.
- 3
Check the representative route before the call. The page says a representative is served when the power of attorney is uploaded to the electronic register of notarial acts. A document signed abroad may need another route, such as a visit to a service centre, so ask first. Our my.gov.ge article explains why the wording of the power of attorney decides everything.
- 4
Put the right contacts on the record. The order asks for a mobile number registered in Georgia and, if the taxpayer wishes, an email address, and says a changed number must be entered on the page. The video-call form confirms each contact with a code.
- 5
At first login, change the password and switch on two-step authorisation. The login page describes it: after the username and password, a code arrives by text message at the number given in advance.
- 6
Fill in the taxpayer information card, which the order requires of an active taxpayer. The Revenue Service publishes a video instruction for it, and the login page lists an unfilled card among the factors that affect a taxpayer's rating.
The phone number is the weak point. Login codes go to it, and the video-call page says a password is recovered through the number held in the Revenue Service's records. Two-step authorisation also asks for a code word, which the login page warns cannot be viewed or changed later. With the password and the code word both lost, the page sends you to a service centre. For a company with more than one director, the order leaves password recovery and a change of the contact number to the director who manages the company's Public Registry portal account. Register a Georgian number the company controls, not the personal phone of an employee or of an accountant who may leave.
Giving an accountant access without giving away the password
A document filed through the portal needs no signature. The order on tax administration gives it the same legal force as a signed and stamped paper, so whatever is filed under the director's login is the company's act. That is the reason not to hand the login to anyone. The portal has its own tools for delegation: at the time of writing its menu lists management of sub-user rights and a list of trusted persons, and the Revenue Service's video instructions include one on sub-user registration. The accountant then works under their own name, with the rights you give, and loses them the day the engagement ends.
| Person | Access | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Director or owner | Main login, the registered phone, the code word | Responsibility for every filing stays here |
| Accountant | Own sub-user or trusted-person access, with filing rights | Returns are filed under a name that can be traced and withdrawn |
| Staff who issue invoices or waybills | Own user, limited to those documents | They are raised as transactions happen, not at month end |
| Former provider | None, removed the day the engagement ends | An access nobody remembers is a filing nobody can explain |
The sections a founder should recognise
You do not need to read Georgian to know what you are looking at. Ask whoever runs the portal to show you these six areas once, on a shared screen, and to tell you each month what changed in them. They are described here by function, because labels and layout change.
| Area | What it holds | Ask each month |
|---|---|---|
| Returns | Each return filed, with its registration number and date | Was every return due this month filed, and by whom? |
| Taxpayer's card and balance | Tax assessed, paid and outstanding | Is anything showing as owed or overpaid? |
| Messages | Documents and notices from the tax authority | Is anything unopened, and what is its date? |
| Invoices and waybills | Electronic tax invoices issued and received, waybills for goods | Was every invoice from a supplier answered? |
| Payments | What reached the budget, and when | Did the money arrive before the due date? |
| Calendar and rating | Coming deadlines and the taxpayer behaviour rating | What is due next, and did the rating move? |
Two details are worth knowing. First, the order on tax administration, as published at the time of writing, treats a return as received when the portal registers it and gives it a registration number; a return that did not register, whatever the reason, is not treated as filed. Ask for the registration number of every return. Second, the login page describes a taxpayer behaviour rating, calculated on the Revenue Service's own data for the previous calendar month. Among the factors it lists are late returns, frequent corrections of returns, tax arrears or late payment, offence reports, late answers to electronic invoices received, an unfilled information card and two-step authorisation left switched off. For a founder it is a free monthly sign of whether the routine is working.
A notice on the portal is delivered when opened, and can be served unopened
This is the rule that costs money. Under the Tax Code an electronic document is delivered when the addressee reads it, so a founder might think that not looking is a defence. It is not. Leaving a message unopened only postpones delivery: after 30 days the tax authority can serve it by public notice, and the clock then runs whether or not anyone has read it.
The tax authority may send a document in writing or electronically and chooses the form. A document sent electronically counts as delivered when the addressee reads it. If a taxpayer other than a natural person has not read it within 30 days of its being placed on the authorised user page, the authority may publish the document on an official website, and it then counts as delivered on the 20th day after publication. A notice of a field tax audit counts as delivered when read or, at the latest, on the 30th day after it was placed on the page.
The message nobody opened
A foreign-owned LLC changed accountants in January. The old accountant's phone stayed on the record as the contact number. On 3 March the Revenue Service placed a request for documents on the company's authorised user page.
- 13 March: the document is on the page. The text alert goes to a phone nobody at the company holds.
- 22 April: 30 days have passed and the document is still unopened. The authority may now publish it.
- 3Say it is published on 6 April. On 26 April, the 20th day, it counts as delivered, and the time allowed for the answer starts to run.
- 4In June the company restores its access, and the new accountant finds a request that is already overdue. The Code sets a fixed fine for documents not supplied on the tax authority's request in time: GEL 400 at the time of writing.
Nothing about the request was difficult. The company lost its clean record and now faces a fine, because one phone number was wrong and nobody opened the page for three months.
Illustrative dates. The 30 and 20 days are the periods in the Tax Code at the time of writing; the time allowed for an answer depends on the document. Our article on tax penalties has the table of fines.
The interface is in Georgian: what that means in practice
- The login page offers an English version. At the time of writing, part of the page changes to English and part stays in Georgian. Expect the same inside, and expect official documents in Georgian.
- Machine translation is good enough to sort a message into routine or urgent. It is not a safe basis for an answer or a filing decision.
- Name one person who reads Georgian and opens the messages on a fixed day every week, and a second person for holidays. Write both names down.
- Keep your own log in your own language: the date of each document, what it asks, the deadline, who answered. The portal is the tax authority's record; the log is yours.
- The Revenue Service's video instructions page has an English index. It lists, among others, authorisation and change of personal data, two-step verification, sub-user registration and checking debt information.
Next step
Someone has to open the messages
We set up Revenue Service access as part of formation and act as the local contact who reads what arrives and reports it to you. The credentials stay with you.
See what the secretarial plan coversWhat this article does not answer
It does not explain how to complete any return: that is your accountant's work, and our article on monthly accounting describes what they need from you. It does not walk through every screen, because we have described only what the Revenue Service shows publicly and what the law says, and the portal changes. It does not settle whether your power of attorney will be accepted for a remote activation; that depends on its wording and on where it was signed, and the Revenue Service decides. We set up access, provide the registered address and watch the notices for the companies we look after. Tax returns are prepared under a separate accounting service, and we do not keep a client's login from the client.
General information, not legal or tax advice. Electronic communication with the tax authority is governed by the Tax Code of Georgia and the Minister of Finance's order on tax administration. The portal's screens, the video-call service and the Revenue Service's procedures change; confirm the current process before relying on this description.