Living and Working in Georgia (Caucasus)

Georgia sets its own entry policy and it runs in bands. First, Ordinance No. 255 of 5 June 2015 of the Government of Georgia lists the jurisdictions whose citizens may enter and stay in Georgia without a visa for one full year; the list covers the United States, the United Kingdom together with its overseas territories and Crown Dependencies, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Israel, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, Turkey, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Gulf states, every EU member state, Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland, Ukraine, Armenia and Azerbaijan. A note to the same list adds that citizens of EU member states may enter with a national identity card as well as with a travel document. Second, Ordinance No. 256 of the same date turns on the document held rather than on citizenship: a holder of a valid visa or residence permit of one of the jurisdictions it lists may enter and stay without a visa for 90 calendar days in any 180-day period, whatever their nationality, the visa or permit having to be valid on the day of entry. Third, a bilateral agreement in force since 28 May 2024 exempts holders of ordinary passports of the People's Republic of China from the Georgian visa requirement, for each single stay of up to 30 days and up to 90 days in any 180-day period; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia states that rule on its consular portal. Fourth, nationals covered by none of these, among them India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Vietnam and the Philippines, need a Georgian visa unless they hold one of the documents Ordinance No. 256 lists: Article 7 of the Law of Georgia on the Legal Status of Aliens and Stateless Persons sets the categories as diplomatic (A), special (B), ordinary (C), immigration (D) and transit (T), and the Ministry runs an electronic visa portal. One requirement then runs across every band: under the Law of Georgia on Tourism, since 1 January 2026 every tourist entering Georgia must hold and present a valid health and accident insurance policy covering at least GEL 30,000, in physical or electronic form and in Georgian or English, issued by a Georgian or a foreign insurer, and covering the full period of the stay including the arrival and departure dates. The Ministry names five exempt categories: holders of diplomatic and special visas; holders of diplomatic, official, service and special passports; accredited staff of diplomatic missions, consular representations and representation offices of international organisations, together with their accredited family members; persons whose entry into Georgia is envisaged by international treaties of Georgia; and drivers engaged in international road freight and passenger transport.

Entering does not settle the right to work. Under the labour-immigrant chapter of the Law of Georgia on Labour Migration, an alien without a permanent residence permit has the right to be provided with employment, and to carry out labour or entrepreneurial activity in Georgia, only where a work residence permit, a D1 category immigration visa or another residence permit provided by Georgian legislation is held together with the right to work given under Georgian legislation, save the exceptions the law itself provides. The decision to give or refuse that right to work rests with the Ministry of Internally Displaced Persons from the Occupied Territories, Labour, Health and Social Affairs of Georgia. Article 1(4) of the same law lists the cases in which it does not apply, among them refugees and registered asylum seekers, staff of diplomatic missions, consular offices and international organisations, accredited foreign journalists, persons whose employment is governed by an international treaty of Georgia, holders of a valid investment residence permit, an alien who carries out labour activities for a local employer completely remotely where those activities do not require entry into the territory of Georgia, and an alien who carries out labour activities or provides services in favour of a non-resident person where they relate to that person's activities outside Georgia. Article 17 required the Government to approve the procedure for giving the right to work before 1 March 2026, and gives labour immigrants whose registration was active as of 1 March 2026 until 1 January 2027 to obtain the right to work and an appropriate residence permit. This states the instruments in force and is not immigration advice.

Residence permits are issued by the Agency, that is the LEPL Public Service Development Agency under the Ministry of Justice of Georgia (Article 14 of the Law of Georgia on the Legal Status of Aliens and Stateless Persons). Article 15 sets out the grounds: work, study, family reunification, former citizen of Georgia, stateless person, special, permanent residence, investment, a temporary permit for victims of domestic violence, a short-term permit for owners of immovable property, an unlimited permit, and a temporary permit for a person employed in information technology. The Agency states that an alien applies 40 calendar days before lawful stay in Georgia expires, with carve-outs for the unlimited, investment, special, domestic-violence, short-term and IT permits. It also states that a residence permit is not issued on the basis of a category C ordinary visa, nor to an alien staying under the Ordinance No. 256 route, and those two rules carry a shorter list of exceptions: the investment permit, the special permit, the temporary permit for victims of domestic violence and the IT permit. Article 14(1-3) and 14(1-4) of the Law name the same four. The Agency publishes an online application route for most permit types; the Public Service Hall counters, together with the Agency's territorial offices, are the ones it names for its related migration services, the emigration permit and the deferral of the obligation to leave Georgia.

The thresholds sit in the law and are restated by the Agency. The investment residence permit requires an investment in Georgia of at least USD 300,000 equivalent in lari, or title to non-agricultural immovable property whose market value exceeds USD 300,000 equivalent, the value established by a certified assessor accredited by the Georgian Accreditation Centre. The short-term residence permit applies where the market value of non-agricultural immovable property exceeds USD 150,000 equivalent. A work residence permit goes to a labour immigrant registered with the Ministry of Internally Displaced Persons from the Occupied Territories, Labour, Health and Social Affairs of Georgia, or to an alien carrying on entrepreneurial activity in Georgia; the file includes monthly income of at least five times the minimum subsistence level for the average consumer in Georgia, and a Revenue Service certificate showing employer annual turnover of at least GEL 50,000 per alien applying, or GEL 35,000 for educational institutions and medical facilities. The Agency's fee for a work residence permit is GEL 300 for a decision by the 30th calendar day, GEL 450 by the 20th and GEL 600 by the 10th. A permanent residence permit goes to the spouse or minor child of a Georgian citizen, to the parent of a minor Georgian citizen, and to an alien who has lived in Georgia for the last 10 years on a temporary residence permit, periods of study, medical treatment and diplomatic service excluded. Article 15 already carries a replacement text marked as taking effect on 1 September 2026, under which the spouse route runs instead through a new residence permit of a spouse of a citizen of Georgia, issued for one year and extendable to five, with the permanent residence permit following those five years; the 10-year temporary-residence route is unchanged. Thresholds and fees change; this states them as published and is not immigration advice.

Under Article 81(1) of the Tax Code of Georgia, a natural person's taxable income is taxed at 20% unless the Code provides otherwise, with no progressive scale. Article 81(2) and (3) set 5% on income from letting residential space where the person takes no deductions from it, and on surplus from the provision of a residential apartment or house with the land attached, or of a vehicle. Residence is a day count: under Article 34(2), a natural person is a Georgian resident for the whole of the current tax year where actual presence in Georgia reaches 183 days or more in any continuous 12-calendar-month period ending in that tax year. Article 34(4) excludes certain periods from that count, among them time spent in Georgia with diplomatic or consular status, as an employee of an international organisation acting under an international agreement of Georgia, in transit between two foreign countries, or for treatment or leisure.

Cross-border taxation runs through Georgia's own treaty network rather than any single bilateral instrument. The Ministry of Finance of Georgia publishes the list and states that 58 treaties on the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion are in force, drafted on the OECD Model Tax Convention. Partners on that list include the United Kingdom, Ireland, India, Singapore, Japan, Korea, China, Israel, Germany, France, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates. The Ministry's list does not include the United States, Canada, Australia or New Zealand. Amounts are set in lari (GEL), so a figure converted into another currency moves with the exchange rate. This states the instruments in force and is not tax advice.

Chapter XII of the Tax Code of Georgia sets out special tax treatments, and Article 83 names three: micro business status for natural persons, small business status for entrepreneur natural persons, and fixed taxpayer status. Under Article 84(1), micro business status may be granted to a natural person who uses no hired labour and carries on economic activity independently, where gross receivable income during a calendar year does not exceed GEL 30,000; under Article 86, a natural person holding that status pays no income tax. Small business status is granted to an entrepreneur natural person under Article 88. Article 90(1) taxes the taxable income of a small business at 1%, and Article 90(2) at 3% where gross income from economic activity has exceeded GEL 500,000, or GEL 700,000 in the case of wine tourism operators and agro tourism operators, the higher rate applying from the beginning of the month in which the excess is recorded until the end of the calendar year. Article 90(3) limits the taxable income of a small business to income from a Georgian source and excludes salary income.

Both statuses are applied for from the tax authority, which issues the certificate (Articles 85 and 89). The Government of Georgia, in agreement with the Financial-Budget Committee of the Parliament of Georgia, may prohibit activities for which either status cannot be granted (Articles 84(3) and 88(2)) and may set income types left out of the ceilings. A micro business that passes the GEL 30,000 limit has 15 days to apply for small business status, failing which the status is revoked and the person leaves special tax treatment (Article 85(3)). Small business status is revoked where gross income from economic activity has exceeded GEL 500,000, or GEL 700,000 for wine tourism and agro tourism operators, in each of two calendar years (Article 89(2)(a)). The two statuses file on different clocks: a micro business files its return before 1 April of the year following the tax year (Article 93(1)), while a small business files its return and pays the tax not later than the 15th day of the month following the accounting month (Article 93(1-1)). The figures above are those in the consolidated Tax Code published in the Legislative Herald of Georgia; ceilings and rates change, and this is not tax advice.

Earnings and prices in Georgia are set in lari. The National Statistics Office of Georgia (Geostat) puts average monthly nominal earnings of employees at GEL 2,363.8 in the first quarter of 2026, against GEL 2,282.7 for 2025 as preliminary data; those two are means across all employees, not expatriate packages. Geostat publishes a median in a separate series drawn from the LEPL Revenue Service of the Ministry of Finance of Georgia: median monthly earnings of employees stood at GEL 1,332 in 2024, the latest year in that series. Housing to an international standard in the central Tbilisi districts is the largest single line item for most arrivals, followed by international-school fees where they apply. Because the figure in your own currency tracks the lari exchange rate, the calculator gives an estimate against your own income.