Georgia

Article 34(2) of the Tax Code counts 183 days in any continuous 12-calendar-month period ending in the tax year, not 183 days inside the calendar year, so a stay that straddles a new year can make you resident without 183 days falling in either one. What it then does is unusual: residence attaches to the entire current tax year, not from the 183rd day. Article 34(5) counts any part of a day as a day, and article 34(3) adds back time you spent outside Georgia specifically for treatment, leisure, a business trip or study - time abroad that still counts as presence. Article 34(8) resets the test every tax period and forbids reusing days already counted in the previous one. Then the part everyone repeats. Article 80(1) taxes a resident on income earned during the calendar year less deductions, which on its face is worldwide, and article 81(1) sets the rate at 20%. The territoriality is an exemption rather than a definition: article 82(1), subparagraph ფ in the Georgian and lettered u in matsne's English, exempts income received by a resident natural person which is not Georgian-source income. The question is therefore never whether income came from abroad but whether article 104 calls it Georgian-source - and article 104(1), subparagraph გ.ზ in the Georgian and c.g in the English, says a service is supplied in Georgia where the provider and the recipient are in different states and the provider is a Georgian resident. A resident freelancer invoicing a foreign client is therefore earning Georgian-source income, and the exemption everyone quotes does not reach them.

Article 10(2) of the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens and Stateless Persons gives a visitor who needs no short-term visa ninety calendar days in any 180-day period. Article 10(3) is the famous one: it lets the Government list countries whose citizens enter without a visa and stay for a different period instead, and it names that period in the statute itself - a full year. Resolution No 255 of 5 June 2015 carries the list. Its original annex has ninety-four numbered entries and four notes, the first of which grants everyone on it entry without a visa and a full year's stay. Eight amending resolutions have moved it since: Jordan became entry 95 in 2017, the People's Republic of China became entry 96 in 2023 with thirty days and tourism only, Swiss and Liechtenstein citizens were allowed to travel on an identity card rather than a passport, and Ukraine has been given two years, then three, then one, with a transitional extension now running to 24 February 2027. Five of the ninety-six entries are not countries at all but groups of territories - the Faroes with Greenland, six British Overseas Territories, three Crown Dependencies, Aruba with the Netherlands Antilles, and French Polynesia with New Caledonia. What the year is not is a status: article 5 lists the grounds for entry and stay and treats a visa, a residence permit and the rest as separate things, so a visa-free year is lawful presence and nothing more.

Georgia has no passive-income residence category. Article 15 of the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens and Stateless Persons is a closed list of the residence permits Georgia issues, and as it stands after the amendments of 15 April and 25 June 2026 it has thirteen entries: work, study, family reunification, former citizen of Georgia, stateless person, special, permanent, spouse of a citizen of Georgia, investment, temporary for a victim of domestic violence, short-term on property, unlimited, and temporary for a person employed in information technologies. Not one of them turns on receiving an income, a pension or a remittance from outside the country, and none sets a monthly figure an applicant has to show. The two that a person living on foreign money can actually use are about property rather than income: the short-term residence permit in article 15(კ), for an alien who owns immovable property in Georgia other than agricultural land with a market value above USD 150 000 equivalent in GEL, extended a year at a time and ending the moment the ownership ends; and the investment residence permit in article 15(თ) at USD 300 000. The only income figure anywhere in article 15 is the USD 25 000 a year in subparagraph (მ), and that is remuneration for work in information technologies, not income from abroad.

There is no retirement residence permit in Georgia. Article 15 of the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens and Stateless Persons is a closed list of the residence permits Georgia issues, and as it stands after the amendments of 15 April and 25 June 2026 it has thirteen entries: work, study, family reunification, former citizen of Georgia, stateless person, special, permanent, spouse of a citizen of Georgia, investment, temporary for a victim of domestic violence, short-term on property, unlimited, and temporary for a person employed in information technologies. None of them mentions a pension, an age, or retirement, and no minimum pension figure appears in the article. What a retiree from one of the ninety-six nationalities on the schedule to Government Resolution No 255 actually has is the full year of visa-free stay under article 10(3), renewed by leaving and returning - lawful presence, with no permit, no card and no accrual towards permanent residence, because article 15(ზ) counts only years spent on a temporary residence permit. Where a retiree wants a permit rather than a stay, the routes available are the ones everybody else uses: property at USD 150 000, investment at USD 300 000, family reunification with a permit-holding relative, or marriage to a Georgian citizen.

Article 15(ა) issues a work residence permit to an alien who has obtained the right to carry out labour activity, with the documents set by a Government ordinance, and article 16(1)(ა) issues it first for between six months and one year. Extensions run under article 16(3) on the same conditions as the original grant and may not take the total past twelve years. The interesting one is article 15(მ), the permit for a person employed in information technologies, which the 2021 amendment wrote to reach three different people: a labour immigrant, an alien registered in Georgia as an entrepreneur natural person holding Small Business Status, and a person authorised to manage and represent an international company working in information technologies. The first two must show at least two years' experience in the field and a certificate that their annual remuneration from it is not less than USD 25 000 equivalent in GEL. It is issued for three years at first and extended three years at a time to a maximum of twelve. That a sole trader on the 1% Small Business regime is named in the immigration statute is the join between the tax story and the residence story, and it is written into the Law rather than left to practice.

Article 15(თ) issues an investment residence permit on either of two things: an investment of at least USD 300 000 equivalent in GEL made under the Law on Investment Activity Promotion and Guarantees, or ownership of immovable property other than agricultural land with a market value above USD 300 000 equivalent in GEL, valued by a certified assessor of a body accredited by the Georgian Accreditation Centre. Family members - spouse, minor child, and a fully dependent beneficiary of support, person with a disability or person recognised as legally incapable - come with it. The permit runs five years, and article 16(1)(ე) attaches a condition most summaries leave out: an investor must file turnover figures from the Revenue Service every year, and the permit terminates unless the business turned over at least USD 50 000 in year one, USD 100 000 in year two and USD 120 000 in each of years three, four and five. The property route is tested differently - it requires only that the ownership is kept. Article 15(ლ) then converts either into an unlimited residence permit with the right of permanent living: for the investor on proof of the fifth year's USD 120 000, for the owner on five years of unbroken ownership, applied for before the five years expire.

Article 15(ბ) issues a study residence permit to an adult, for the purpose of studying on a higher or vocational education programme at an authorised educational institution in Georgia; the rules and conditions for enrolment and study are set by Georgian legislative acts and a Government ordinance. It is grouped with the work and family-reunification permits in article 16(1)(ა) and issued first for between six months and one year, extendable under article 16(3) on the same conditions to a ceiling of twelve years. The sting is in article 15(ზ). The ten years of temporary residence that earn a permanent residence permit expressly exclude the period lived in Georgia for the purpose of study - and the period lived here for medical treatment, and time working at a diplomatic mission. A degree and a doctorate in Tbilisi leave a person exactly where they started on the permanent-residence clock.

Georgia issues no residence permit by descent. Article 15 of the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens and Stateless Persons is a closed list of the residence permits Georgia issues, and as it stands after the amendments of 15 April and 25 June 2026 it has thirteen entries: work, study, family reunification, former citizen of Georgia, stateless person, special, permanent, spouse of a citizen of Georgia, investment, temporary for a victim of domestic violence, short-term on property, unlimited, and temporary for a person employed in information technologies. Ancestry touches two of them only sideways. Article 15(დ) gives a residence permit to an alien whose Georgian citizenship has been terminated - a route for a former citizen, not for a descendant. Article 15(ვ), the special residence permit, closes with a category that is not about trafficking or government initiative at all: a citizen of another state who holds the status of a compatriot living abroad. That status is created by a separate Law of Georgia on Compatriots Residing Abroad and Diaspora Organisations, which this Law does not define and which we have not read, so this record names the door and not what is behind it. The clearer ancestral route is to citizenship rather than to residence. Article 17 lets the President grant citizenship by way of exception, and article 17(2)(ა) tells the decision-maker to weigh, among other things, that the applicant considers Georgia their homeland and that they or their ancestor lived in an occupied territory, were displaced from it, or emigrated at some time for political opinions or because of hard social and economic conditions. It is a discretion with a statutory list of what counts, not an entitlement - and it is the one naturalisation route that does not require giving up the other citizenship.

Marriage to a Georgian citizen now has a category of its own, and it is new: article 15(ზ¹), a residence permit for the spouse of a citizen of Georgia, issued before a permanent residence permit is obtained. The two amendments recorded at the foot of article 15 in 2026 are Law of Georgia No 1510 of 15 April 2026 and Law of Georgia No 1803 of 25 June 2026; article 16¹ carries only the second. Article 16(1)(დ¹) gives it one year at first, extendable by two years at a time to a maximum of five, and provides that once five years have passed, if the marriage is maintained, a permanent residence permit is issued. Article 15(ზ) says the same thing from the other side: a permanent residence permit goes to the spouse of a Georgian citizen who has lived in Georgia for the last five years on a spouse permit. The 2026 law also built the machinery to test the marriage. New article 16¹ sets up an Interagency Commission of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the State Security Service and the Agency, which may interview the spouses separately and together, may require them to produce every piece of evidence of the marriage, and may verify what the documents say by visiting and inspecting the place of residence and interviewing people. Refusing to appear, refusing the inspection or otherwise refusing to cooperate is itself a ground for refusing the permit; where the Commission thinks there are sufficient grounds to assume a sham, it sends the file to the investigative body and copies to the Prosecution Service, and the application is suspended until prosecution starts or the investigation ends.

No residence permit in Georgia is granted by membership of a union, a common market or a free-movement area. Article 15 of the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens and Stateless Persons is a closed list of the residence permits Georgia issues, and as it stands after the amendments of 15 April and 25 June 2026 it has thirteen entries: work, study, family reunification, former citizen of Georgia, stateless person, special, permanent, spouse of a citizen of Georgia, investment, temporary for a victim of domestic violence, short-term on property, unlimited, and temporary for a person employed in information technologies. Not one rests on a treaty, and the Law contains no equivalent of a Mercosur residence agreement or a Nordic common labour market. Two treaty-shaped provisions exist and neither gives residence. Article 10(3¹) lets an alien holding a visa or residence permit of a country named in a Government ordinance enter Georgia without a visa, for the period and on the conditions that ordinance sets: that is a rule about entry, not about living here. Article 4(5) and (6) exempt representatives of NATO armed forces and of countries in the Partnership for Peace Programme from the visa requirement when they enter, leave or transit on official duties connected with training and operations, and allow visa-free movement on other official duties with the prior written consent of the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Both are exemptions from a visa, and both are tied to a purpose rather than to residence.

Article 12(1) of the Organic Law on Georgian Citizenship sets four cumulative requirements for ordinary naturalisation: lawful and continuous residence in Georgia for the last ten years up to the day of applying, knowledge of the state language within the established limits, knowledge of Georgian history and the basic principles of law within those limits, and work in Georgia and/or real estate in Georgia, or entrepreneurial activity in the territory of Georgia, or a holding of shares or an interest in a Georgian enterprise. Marriage shortens it: article 14(1) grants citizenship under the simplified procedure after five years of lawful continuous residence, requiring only the language and history limbs and not the work-or-property one. Dual citizenship is where Georgia is strict in a way the brochures are not. Article 3(2) establishes a single citizenship and article 3(3) allows a Georgian citizen to be a foreign citizen only in the cases in articles 17 and 21¹. Article 15 makes the mechanism concrete: the President's decree granting citizenship to a foreign citizen - except a decree granting it by way of exception - takes effect only when the competent Georgian authorities receive the document certifying that the person has left the other country's citizenship. So the ordinary route requires renunciation, and only the President's exceptional grant does not. Coming the other way, article 21(1)(გ) makes a Georgian citizen lose citizenship on acquiring a foreign one unless article 21¹ applies, and article 21¹(1) applies only where consent to retain was obtained from the Georgian state before the foreign citizenship was acquired, on a test of whether the person's connection with Georgia is considered reliable.

Article 30 of the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens and Stateless Persons gives an alien in Georgia the right to healthcare in accordance with Georgian legislation - a right stated and immediately handed on. Article 31(1) is the one with content: an alien permanently residing in Georgia has the same rights to assistance, pension and other forms of social security as a citizen, while article 31(2) leaves the social security of aliens temporarily staying here to legislation and international agreements. Article 25(1) sets the background rule that aliens have equality of treatment with citizens unless legislation says otherwise. What the state actually funds is the Universal Health Care State Programme, approved by Government Resolution No 36 of 21 February 2013. Article 2 of that programme defines its users by document rather than by residence: persons holding a document confirming Georgian citizenship, a neutral identity card or a neutral travel document, and stateless persons with status in Georgia, minus several groups already insured under earlier programmes. A foreign national on a residence permit is not in that definition. The caution this record carries is real: matsne publishes Resolution No 36 free only in its original February 2013 form and charges for the consolidated text, and there have been more than a hundred consolidations since, the most recent on 18 September 2026.

Nothing in the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens and Stateless Persons makes a bank account depend on residence. Article 25(1) gives aliens equality of treatment with citizens unless legislation provides otherwise, article 28 lets them carry out investment and business activity with the same rights and duties as citizens, and article 32(1) lets them own, inherit and bequeath property. No provision conditions a financial service on holding a permit. The constraint is anti-money-laundering law. Article 11(1)(ა) of the Law on Facilitating the Prevention of Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism makes the preventive measures mandatory on the establishment of a business relationship - with no threshold, unlike the one-off transaction triggers at GEL 15 000 and GEL 3 000 in the same paragraph. Article 10(1) says what those measures are: identify the customer and verify them against a reliable and independent source, identify the beneficial owner and take reasonable steps to verify them, establish the purpose and intended nature of the business relationship, and monitor it. Article 10(4) adds that establishing the purpose means finding out the substance of the customer's activity and obtaining information on the nature, volume and frequency of expected transactions. That is the questionnaire a foreign applicant meets, and it is statutory rather than a bank's preference.

The Law of Georgia on Road Traffic applies to a citizen of Georgia, to a foreign citizen and to a stateless person taking part in road traffic in Georgia, unless an international treaty of Georgia provides otherwise. Article 15(17) obliges a driver to carry, and produce on demand, a document confirming the right to drive that has legal force in the territory of Georgia, together with a duly certified translation if the data in it are not written in Georgian or Latin letters. What the Act does not do is say for how long a foreign licence has legal force here. Article 58(7) delegates the rules and conditions for exchanging and recognising a foreign-issued driving document to this Law and to an order of the Minister of Internal Affairs, and the period lives in the order. Two consequences the Act does state are easy to miss. Article 56(13) applies the Georgian category equivalences to a foreign licence holder only if the law of the issuing country provides for them, so what you may drive here is read off your own country's rules. And article 59(2⁷) and (2⁸) put a foreign licence inside the Georgian penalty-point system: it is credited with 100 points once, from the day it acquires legal force in Georgia, articles 58 and 59 then apply to it, and when the points run out the holder is forbidden to drive a motor vehicle in Georgia until the right is restored under a procedure the Minister of Internal Affairs sets.

Article 199(დ.ე) of the Tax Code exempts from import duty the import of goods not intended for economic activity - including furniture, household goods and one vehicle per family - when a person enters Georgia for permanent residence, which is confirmed by a document issued under a procedure established by the Ministry of Justice of Georgia. The certificate is the whole of the gateway and it is the part a mover can get wrong: the relief is not triggered by the move, it is triggered by the paper. A second relief sits beside it for people who have not formally moved. Article 199(დ.დ) frees goods worth up to GEL 15 000 under groups 28 to 97 of the national commodity nomenclature, excluding group 87, for a person entering Georgia after staying abroad for more than six months at a time. Two things attach. Article 188(1)(h) exempts from excise tax the import of a motor car under article 199(დ.დ) and (დ.ე). And transitional paragraph 132 of article 309 exempts imports made under article 199(d) and (n) from VAT - until 1 January 2028, at which point a dated relief disappears and the customs duty exemption will stand alone.