There is a penalty for unauthorised work in Georgia and it is larger than most people expect, because it lands twice: once on the company and once on the person it employs. What it does not do is reach every foreign national earning money in the country. The fine follows an employment relationship, and the rules that catch individuals with no Georgian employer are about their stay rather than their work. Here is who carries what, and what the exposure actually is.
What actually counts as working without a permit
The Special Labour Permit has existed since 1 March 2026, issued by the Employment Promotion State Agency, and it is required in three situations rather than across the board.
A Georgian employer with a non-Georgian national on staff needs one for that person. An Individual Entrepreneur trading with Georgian clients needs one. And anyone applying for a work or IT residence permit needs one granted before that application is filed. Those are the triggers. Outside them there is no permit to hold, which means there is no permit to be working without.
The test is who pays you, and whether you want a residence card. A foreign national running an IE for foreign clients, or working remotely for a company with no Georgian presence, is not inside the regime at all. Neither is someone living here on savings, a pension or passive income. The reasoning and the worked examples are in who needs a work permit in Georgia.
Two categories are exempt even where a trigger would otherwise apply: investment residence permit holders and permanent residents. Diplomatic and consular staff, accredited foreign journalists, and refugees and asylum seekers sit outside the regime under their own rules.
Where a client list is mixed, or a client is a foreign company that pays from a Georgian account, that is a question for a consultation on the facts rather than something to resolve from a table. No published proportion or threshold settles it, and we are not going to invent one.
The fines
| Who is fined | First finding | On repeat |
|---|---|---|
| The employer | GEL 2,000, about $765 | GEL 4,000, about $1,530 |
| The foreign national employed | GEL 2,000, about $765 | GEL 4,000, about $1,530 |
| Combined exposure per employee | GEL 4,000 | GEL 8,000 |
Three points about that table matter more than the numbers.
The two fines are separate, not shared. A single unauthorised employment relationship produces a penalty on each side of it. The company is not paying the worker's fine and the worker is not paying the company's, and neither can settle the other's.
They exist together. The employee's half of the penalty is part of the same finding as the employer's. It is not a free-standing fine on earning money in Georgia, which is why it does not reach someone with no Georgian employer and no permit obligation in the first place.
The lari figure is the law. These amounts are fixed in lari by the regulation, so the dollar conversions beside them drift with the exchange rate while the statutory figure does not. Quote the lari number if you are budgeting for it.
What a repeat means in practice
The doubling applies to a repeat finding, which is why the record kept about the first one matters more than the first fine does. A second finding against the same company is GEL 4,000, and against the same worker it is also GEL 4,000, and the two are still separate.
For a company employing several foreign nationals the arithmetic gets uncomfortable quickly, because the penalty attaches per relationship rather than per inspection. Four unauthorised hires is GEL 8,000 of company exposure on a first finding, before anything happens to the employees. The rest of the employer's obligations, including the GEL 50,000 turnover requirement per foreign employee and the GEL 35,000 rate for educational and medical institutions, sit in the employer's guide to hiring foreigners.
Removal and entry bans
Fines are the administrative floor, not the ceiling. The Law on the Legal Status of Aliens and Stateless Persons provides for removal of a foreign national from Georgia and for a prohibition on entering the country for a set period.
Those powers run off immigration status, and they are the part of this subject that reaches everyone. Overstaying your lawful presence engages them whether or not you have ever earned a lari here, and it is a separate matter from the labour permit with its own penalties, set out in the guide to overstaying in Georgia. Unauthorised work can support a removal decision as well, where a permit was required and not held.
We do not publish a standard ban length, because there is no single figure to publish: the period is set in the decision itself. If you are served with one, the document tells you what it is and when it starts, and that document is the thing to bring to a lawyer rather than a summary of it.
What has changed is the appeal position. The window is 10 calendar days from the decision, and since the 2025 amendments an appeal no longer suspends enforcement. Filing an appeal used to buy time by pausing the thing you were appealing. It does not now. The removal or the ban runs while the appeal is considered, which means the ten days are for finding representation and filing properly, not for deciding whether to bother.
The part that costs more than the fine
This is the section to read if your residence permit rests on your job.
A residence permit is granted on a basis. A work residence permit rests on authorised employment; an IT permit rests on qualifying income from qualifying work. Unauthorised work does not sit neatly alongside that basis, it undermines it. A permit granted on a basis that turns out to be unlawful is a permit that can be revoked, and the grounds for revoking a Georgian residence permit include losing the basis the permit was issued on.
So for an employee the sequence that hurts is not fine, then bill, then over. It is fine, then a question about status, then a renewal that has to be defended rather than filed. The administrative penalty becomes a question about the right to stay, and that is a materially larger problem than GEL 2,000. For the employer it means losing a hire to a status problem the company created.
It also propagates. A labour permit application describes the activity performed and since when. A residence permit application describes the same thing again. A renewal asks what the past year contained. Each of those is a moment where an unauthorised period becomes visible on the record, and each is a moment where an inconsistent answer is worse than an awkward true one. Late or defective filings are already a live refusal ground for labour permits, and a refusal on the labour permit stops the residence permit behind it dead.
None of this bites a person whose permission to be here is visa-free entry and whose income comes from abroad. There is no basis to undermine, because nothing was granted on one.
How enforcement actually works
Georgia did not hire an army of inspectors in 2026. What it did was build the record.
The illegal-presence database. From October 2025 the state maintains a register of illegal presence, alongside expanded inspection powers. The practical effect is not more raids. It is that a finding persists and is queried later, by a different agency, at a moment when somebody needs something.
Expanded biometrics. The same October 2025 changes widened biometric collection to fingerprints and palm prints. That is what makes identity across encounters reliable, which is what makes a repeat finding a repeat rather than a fresh first one. The detail on what is collected and held sits with biometrics for a Georgian residence permit.
Reconciliation, not raids. The likeliest way an unauthorised period surfaces is paperwork meeting paperwork. Employment registrations and tax filings held by the Revenue Service describe who has been paying whom. Permit files held by the Public Service Development Agency describe who was authorised to do what. Those two pictures are compared at the points where somebody asks the state for something.
That is the honest description of the risk, and it argues for acting rather than panicking. The moments of exposure are predictable: a renewal, a new application, an employer inspection, a border crossing, a change of employer. Nobody is scanning cafés for laptops. The system waits until you come to it, and then it has a memory it did not have two years ago.
If you think you have been working without a permit
Start by checking whether a permit was ever required, because most people who arrive at this page turn out to be outside the regime entirely.
If nobody in Georgia employs you and your clients are foreign, there is nothing to regularise. No permit was due, no fine applies, and no window is running against you. Confirm your own stay is in order and stop there.
If you have Georgian clients through an IE, the permit trigger is live and your position depends on what your client base actually looks like. That is worth putting to a consultation rather than guessing at, and the practicalities of the self-employed application are in the self-employed labour permit guide.
If a Georgian company employs you and had you on the books before 1 March 2026, your employer sits inside a transition window that closes on 1 January 2027, and the filing is theirs to make rather than yours. Nobody is in default while it runs. The transition deadline and the queue behind it is the post that matters, and it is worth forwarding to whoever handles the company's compliance.
If a Georgian company hired you after 1 March 2026 with no permit in place, both sides are in scope and the fix is the application rather than the exit. Leaving Georgia and returning on a fresh entry does not erase the period, and a D1 immigration visa does not launder it either. The record is attached to the relationship, not to your entry stamp.
Where a filing is genuinely due, three things are worth doing in order:
- Establish the dates. When the income started, what the activity was, which entity paid it. Vagueness here is what turns a manageable disclosure into a credibility problem.
- Get the framing right before filing. A labour permit application is also a description of what has been going on. That is a reason to prepare it properly, not a reason to stay unauthorised.
- Fix the sequence. If a residence permit is part of the plan, the labour permit comes first, and filing inside the last 40 days of your lawful stay means the application is refused review rather than considered late.
Government authorisation for labour activity in Georgia. Required to employ foreign staff, to trade as an IE with Georgian clients, or to apply for a work or IT residence permit.
See what it costs, from $450
What we do about it
Where an unauthorised period is short and the underlying position is sound, the work is preparing an application that is complete and consistent, and filing it before a renewal or an inspection raises the question for us.
Where a fine or a removal decision has already been served, the clock is ten calendar days and an appeal pauses nothing, so that is a same-week conversation rather than something to sit on. The full set of 2026 changes behind all of this is mapped in what changed in Georgian immigration this year.
Key takeaways
- Unauthorised employment is GEL 2,000 on the employer and a separate GEL 2,000 on the employee, both doubling on a repeat.
- The two penalties are independent. Neither party can settle the other's.
- The fine attaches to an employment relationship, so it does not reach a remote worker or an IE invoicing foreign clients, who need no permit in the first place.
- Overstaying and other immigration-status breaches are separate offences that apply to everyone, whatever they earn and whoever pays them.
- Removal and a ban on re-entry are available on top of a fine, with the period set in the decision.
- Where a residence permit rests on employment, unauthorised work undermines its basis, which turns a fine into a question about the right to stay.
- Enforcement runs on records rather than raids: the October 2025 illegal-presence database, expanded biometrics, and reconciliation between tax and permit files.
- Employers with foreign staff on the books before 1 March 2026 have until 1 January 2027, and nobody is in default meanwhile.
- Appeals run to 10 calendar days and no longer suspend enforcement, so representation has to be arranged immediately.
Frequently asked questions
What is the fine for working in Georgia without a permit?
GEL 2,000, about $765, on the employer, and a separate GEL 2,000 on the foreign national it employs. Both figures double on a repeat finding, and the amounts are fixed in lari by regulation, so the dollar equivalent moves with the exchange rate while the statutory figure does not. The penalty attaches to an employment relationship, so it does not reach someone with no Georgian employer.
Does my employer get fined as well if I work without a permit?
Yes, separately and in the same amount. The employer's GEL 2,000 is not a share of the worker's and cannot be settled by them, or the reverse. For a company employing several foreign nationals the penalty attaches per relationship, so the exposure scales with headcount rather than with the number of inspections.
What happens if I am found working without a permit a second time?
The penalty doubles to GEL 4,000 on the employer and GEL 4,000 on the employee. The doubling depends on the first finding being on record, which is what the October 2025 database and the expanded biometric collection make reliable. A second finding is also harder to present as an oversight in any later application.
Can I be deported from Georgia for working without a permit?
Removal from Georgia and a prohibition on re-entry are available to the state under the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens and Stateless Persons, in addition to a fine rather than instead of it. In practice those powers run off immigration status, so overstaying is the more common route to one, and unauthorised work can support a decision where a permit was required and not held. The length of any entry ban is set in the decision itself.
Does working without a permit affect my Georgian residence permit?
Where the permit rests on your job, this is the most serious part of it. A work residence permit is granted on authorised employment and an IT permit on qualifying work, and unauthorised work undermines that basis rather than sitting beside it. Losing the basis is a recognised ground for revocation. Somebody who holds no residence permit, or holds one on a different basis, has no exposure of this kind.
I have lived in Georgia since 2024. Have I been working illegally?
Almost certainly not. If your income comes from foreign clients or a foreign employer, no labour permit was ever due and there is nothing to regularise. The requirement reaches foreign nationals employed by a Georgian company, Individual Entrepreneurs with Georgian clients, and people applying for a work or IT residence permit. What is worth checking for the years since 2024 is that your lawful presence was continuous, which is a stay question rather than a work one.
Does remote work for a foreign company count?
No. Working remotely for an employer or clients outside Georgia does not engage the Special Labour Permit, and physical presence in the country does not change that. The trigger is who pays you. If a Georgian company employs you, or Georgian clients pay your Individual Entrepreneur, the permit is in play; if the money comes from abroad, it is not.
How does Georgia find out that someone is working without a permit?
Usually through records rather than inspections. Employment registrations and tax filings describe who has been paying whom, permit files describe who was authorised to do what, and the two are compared when somebody applies for something, renews something or crosses a border. Since October 2025 a finding is also held in a central register rather than sitting in one office.
Can I appeal a fine for working without a permit in Georgia?
Yes, within 10 calendar days of the decision. Since the 2025 amendments an appeal no longer suspends enforcement, so any removal or ban proceeds while the appeal is considered. That makes the ten days a deadline for filing properly with representation, not a period in which the underlying decision is paused.
Should I leave Georgia if I have been working without a permit?
Leaving does not clear a record, because a finding attaches to the parties rather than to an entry stamp, and returning on a fresh entry or an immigration visa does not reset it. Where a permit was genuinely due, the better move is to regularise from inside the country, with the dates established and the application prepared properly before anything is filed.
Will an unauthorised period stop me getting a permit later?
Not automatically, but it becomes part of the file. Labour and residence permit applications both describe the work performed and when, and inconsistent answers across them do more damage than the underlying gap. Refusals are likelier where the file is thin or the account of the activity does not meet the procedural requirements for foreign nationals.
