Someone told you the Georgia setup is simple: register as an Individual Entrepreneur, pay 1% on your turnover, done. For a freelancer invoicing clients abroad that is very nearly the whole story, and the part it leaves out is not the part people worry about. Individual Entrepreneur status is a tax structure. It says nothing about your right to be here, and whether you ever file anything else depends on two facts: who your clients are, and whether you want a residence card. Here is how the pieces interlock, and in what order when they do.
What the 1% actually is
Individual Entrepreneur is a form of business registration in Georgia: a sole trader, registered with the tax authority, invoicing in their own name. Small Business Status is a tax regime that can be applied to it, and under that regime qualifying turnover is taxed at 1%.
That is the whole attraction, and it is a genuine one. A 1% turnover tax is unusually low, the registration is quick, and the compliance burden on a small operation is light.
Two things about it that matter for planning, and that we are not going to state numerically here. Small Business Status carries a turnover ceiling, above which a higher rate applies and the status can be lost. And not every activity qualifies: certain professional and consulting activities are excluded by tax regulation. Both the ceiling and the excluded-activity list are tax-law figures set independently of migration law, and they are the Revenue Service to state rather than an immigration site. Confirm your own activity code and your own ceiling before you build a plan around the 1% rate.
What it is not
Individual Entrepreneur registration is not an immigration status. It does not give you the right to live in Georgia, it does not extend your lawful stay by a single day, and it is not a residence permit application.
This needs saying plainly because the confusion is the most common one we see, and for most people it is a harmless one. Enter Georgia visa-free for 365 days, register as an Individual Entrepreneur, invoice foreign clients, pay 1% on the turnover and you are entirely legal with no permit of any kind. The structure looks complete because on that particular set of facts it is.
What it does not do is accumulate. The visa-free entitlement is a stay, not a status: it builds nothing toward permanent residence, it ends on a fixed date, and it has to be restarted at a border by an officer under no obligation to let you back in. The gap between visa-free presence and a formal permit is not a legality problem. It is a durability problem, and it is why people eventually apply for something.
The three registrations, and which of them are yours
| What | Who grants it | What it gives you | Who files it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Individual Entrepreneur and Small Business Status | Revenue Service | A legal way to invoice, and the 1% rate on qualifying turnover | Anyone using the structure |
| Special Labour Permit | Employment Promotion State Agency | Authorisation for the work the regime reaches | Individual Entrepreneurs with Georgian clients, and anyone applying for a work or IT residence permit |
| Residence permit | Public Service Development Agency | The right to live here beyond your visa-free stay | Anyone who wants one |
Three agencies, three files, three expiry dates, and none of them tells the others what it decided.
Only the first row is universal. Register the Individual Entrepreneur, invoice clients abroad, and the other two are things you read about rather than things you file. They arrive with a change in your facts, not with the passage of time.
The Special Labour Permit arrives when Georgian companies and Georgian residents start paying your invoices, or when you decide you want a work or IT residence permit. It takes up to 30 calendar days, or ten working days on the higher fee.
The residence permit arrives when you decide you want it. Nothing about an Individual Entrepreneur registration compels it and nothing about the work compels it. What pushes people onto it is banking, the ten-year count toward permanent residence, and the tedium of leaving the country to restart a 365-day clock. When you do file it, the order is fixed: it cannot be filed without a valid labour permit in the file, and out of order it is refused rather than queued.
Where the 1% structure genuinely helps
This is the part worth understanding, because it is why the combination is the most common structure among clients who do end up applying for something.
A self-employed applicant qualifies for the Special Labour Permit on one of two tests: annual turnover of GEL 50,000 (roughly $19,000), or income of at least five times the subsistence minimum. Both are evidenced tests, and evidence is where these applications are won or lost.
An Individual Entrepreneur on the 1% regime is already generating exactly the right paperwork. Registered turnover, filed with the tax authority, in your own name, month after month. That is a far stronger file than a foreign freelancer's bank statements and PDF invoices, which is why the structure works: not because 1% is cheap, but because the tax registration produces the immigration evidence as a by-product.
The corollary is uncomfortable and worth stating. If your Individual Entrepreneur has been registered but barely trading, or if your turnover has been running through a foreign account rather than through the Georgian registration, the structure gives you the tax rate without the evidence. How the two self-employed qualifying routes are actually proved is the thing to establish before you file, not after a refusal.
What the residence permit needs on top
The labour permit is authorisation for work. It is not permission to stay, and it is not the thing that gets you a card.
The self-employed track to a work residence permit sits on top of it, and it asks for its own file: the labour permit itself, evidence of your business activity and income, a criminal record certificate from your country of nationality, health insurance, a registered address in Georgia, and the usual passport and photographs. Documents produced abroad generally need apostille or consular legalisation and certified translation.
Government fees run GEL 300 to GEL 600 (about $115 to $230) depending on the processing track, plus GEL 60 (about $23) for the card. The labour permit adds GEL 200 or GEL 400 (about $75 or $155). Our complete self-employed package, covering the sequence end to end, is $1,070.
Then the deadline that governs everything once you have decided to file: an application submitted inside the last 40 days of your lawful stay is refused review rather than processed late. Because the labour permit has to be granted first and takes up to 30 days itself, a self-employed applicant needs to start roughly two and a half months before their stay expires. The full self-employed work residence permit route covers the evidence in detail.
Tax residency is a fourth thing
None of the three registrations above makes you a Georgian tax resident, and being a Georgian tax resident does not give you the right to be in Georgia.
Tax residency turns on presence: 183 days in the relevant period. That test is run by the Revenue Service, it is independent of your immigration status, and it produces some genuinely counter-intuitive outcomes. You can hold a Georgian residence permit and not be Georgian tax resident. You can be Georgian tax resident with no permit at all. The distinction between the two is the most expensive misunderstanding in this area, and how the 183 days are counted is not always what people assume.
What it means concretely: paying 1% on your Individual Entrepreneur turnover says nothing about your position with your home country's tax authority, and it does not by itself end an obligation there. What a Georgian permit does and does not do to your tax exposure is a separate question with a separate answer.
We should be direct about the limits here. We handle immigration. We do not give personalised tax advice, and nothing on this page is any. Where your liability actually falls depends on your nationality, your other residences, your income sources and any treaty in play, and it needs someone looking at your specific facts.
Who this structure suits, and who it does not
It works well for a freelancer or consultant with real, documented Georgian-registered turnover, who intends to be in Georgia most of the year, whose activity is eligible for Small Business Status, and who wants a straightforward path from tax registration to labour permit to residence permit using one body of evidence for all three.
It works badly for someone whose activity is excluded from Small Business Status, someone whose turnover runs through foreign entities and never touches the Georgian registration, someone who wants a residence permit but intends to be in Georgia only occasionally, and anyone treating the 1% rate as the point of the exercise rather than a side effect of it.
One thing to separate out properly, because it gets attached to this structure and does not belong to it. The transition window closing on 1 January 2027 is an employer's window. Georgian companies that already had non-Georgian nationals on the payroll before 1 March 2026 have until that date to put labour permits behind them, and after it the fines are GEL 2,000 on the company and GEL 2,000 on the worker, doubled on a repeat, both statutory in lari. An Individual Entrepreneur invoicing clients abroad is not inside that window and has nothing to file for it.
Where the permit is required and absent, the larger exposure is not the fine anyway. Unauthorised work undermines the basis of a residence permit sitting on top of it. What the permit is, which situations it reaches and how enforcement works is set out in the guide to the Special Labour Permit.
What we do, and what we do not
We run the immigration side: the labour permit, the residence permit, the sequencing between them, and the two expiry dates afterwards. Applications are filed at a Public Service Hall and decided by the Public Service Development Agency, under the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens and Stateless Persons.
Company formation, Individual Entrepreneur registration and Small Business Status applications are handled by our sister firm at Register-Company.ge, which is where the tax registration work belongs. Keeping those separate is deliberate: the tax structure and the immigration status answer to different authorities and different rules, and running them as one undifferentiated "Georgia setup" is exactly how people end up with a 1% tax rate and no idea which of the other two applications, if either, is theirs.
The main route for freelancers, remote workers and employees. Since March 2026 it runs on top of a Special Labour Permit.
See what it costs, from $450
Key takeaways
- Individual Entrepreneur status on the 1% regime is a tax structure. It confers no immigration status and no right to stay.
- An Individual Entrepreneur invoicing clients outside Georgia needs no labour permit and no residence permit, and can run that way indefinitely on visa-free entry.
- The Special Labour Permit becomes required when Georgian clients pay your invoices, or when you apply for a work or IT residence permit.
- The residence permit is elective. It is taken for banking, for the ten-year count toward permanent residence, and to stop resetting the visa-free year at a border.
- The 1% structure genuinely helps where a permit is in play, because registered turnover evidences the self-employed test: GEL 50,000 turnover, or income of at least five times the subsistence minimum.
- Tax residency is a separate question, decided by 183 days of presence, independent of every registration above.
- The 1 January 2027 deadline belongs to employers regularising existing foreign staff, not to Individual Entrepreneurs.
- We do not give personalised tax advice, and company and tax registration is handled separately from immigration.
Frequently asked questions
Does the 1% tax in Georgia give me a residence permit?
No. Individual Entrepreneur registration with Small Business Status is a tax structure administered by the Revenue Service. It grants no right to live in Georgia, it does not extend your lawful stay, and it is not a residence permit application. The residence permit is a separate application to a separate agency, and it is one you choose to make.
Do I need a Special Labour Permit as an Individual Entrepreneur in Georgia?
Only if your clients are Georgian, or if you want a work or IT residence permit. Invoicing clients outside Georgia on the 1% regime engages nothing, and that arrangement can run indefinitely on visa-free entry. Who pays you is the factor, not where you happen to be sitting while you work.
What is the 1% tax in Georgia?
A turnover tax that applies to qualifying activity under Small Business Status, available to registered Individual Entrepreneurs. There is a turnover ceiling above which a higher rate applies, and certain professional activities are excluded from the status entirely. Both are set by tax regulation, so confirm your own position with the Revenue Service.
How does Individual Entrepreneur registration help my labour permit application?
It produces the evidence. A self-employed applicant qualifies on annual turnover of GEL 50,000, roughly $19,000, or income of at least five times the subsistence minimum. Turnover registered and filed with the Georgian tax authority in your own name is a far stronger proof of that than foreign bank statements.
Can I get a Georgian residence permit as a freelancer on the 1% regime?
Yes, through the self-employed track of the work residence permit, provided the labour permit comes first and the income evidence holds up. The sequence is Individual Entrepreneur registration, then the Special Labour Permit, then the residence permit, and filed out of order the residence permit application is refused rather than queued. None of it is compulsory. It is what you file when you have decided you want the card.
Does paying 1% tax in Georgia make me a Georgian tax resident?
No. Tax residency turns on 183 days of presence in the relevant period, and it is decided independently of what you are registered for or what rate you pay. You can pay Georgian tax on Georgian-registered turnover without being tax resident here, and you can be tax resident here with no permit at all.
What happens if I work in Georgia as an Individual Entrepreneur without a labour permit?
If the permit was required, which means Georgian clients are paying you, a fine of GEL 2,000 on you and a separate GEL 2,000 on whoever is paying you, both doubled on a repeat. If your clients are all outside Georgia, no permit was required and there is nothing to penalise. Where it does apply, the larger risk is indirect: unauthorised work undermines the legal basis of any residence permit sitting on top of it.
I registered as an Individual Entrepreneur before March 2026. What do I need to do?
If your clients are outside Georgia and visa-free entry covers your stay, nothing at all. The registration and the 1% rate are unaffected. A labour permit becomes relevant if Georgian clients start paying your invoices, or if you decide you want a work or IT residence permit, in which case it is granted first and takes up to 30 calendar days.
How much does the whole 1% and residence permit setup cost?
On the immigration side, GEL 200 or GEL 400 for the labour permit, GEL 300 to GEL 600 for the residence permit by processing track, and GEL 60 for the card. Our complete self-employed package covering the sequence is $1,070. Tax registration costs are separate and handled by our sister firm.
Is the 1% regime a reason to move to Georgia?
It is a reason people consider it, and a poor reason to decide on its own. The rate applies only to qualifying activity below a ceiling and it says nothing about your obligations elsewhere. It also grants you nothing on the immigration side, so a plan built on the headline rate still leaves open what your status here is in five years. Decide on the whole structure, not the rate.
Do I still need a residence permit if I have a labour permit?
No, unless you want one. The labour permit authorises the work, and your presence is already covered by visa-free entry if your nationality qualifies for the 365-day stay. People take the residence permit anyway, to stop resetting that year at a border, to start the ten-year count toward permanent residence, and because banks treat permit holders differently from visitors. Where you do want it, the labour permit is the prerequisite that makes the application possible.
