Double Tax Treaties in Georgia: How Relief Is Claimed
You pay tax in Georgia, and the country you came from still has a claim on the same income. A double tax treaty decides which of the two gets it. Georgia has 58 of them in force, the United States is not among them, and relief has to be claimed, on a form, with a residency certificate behind it.
- Georgia has 58 double tax treaties in force, and the Ministry of Finance list carries neither the United States nor Russia.
- A resident individual's income that is not Georgian-source is already exempt in Georgia, so a treaty changes nothing for income that is genuinely foreign.
- Work you do from Georgia for foreign clients is Georgian-source income, which is why it falls inside the 1% small business charge.
- Relief on Georgian withholding is given at source by the payer, who files Form No 1 before 1 April of the following year with your residency certificate attached.
- The Revenue Service issues the Georgian residency certificate electronically, and a foreign certificate filed in Georgia needs no apostille or legalisation.
How many double tax treaties Georgia has
The Ministry of Finance publishes the treaty list, and it carries 58 double taxation agreements in force, counted as countries and territories rather than as separate documents. That list is where any treaty question starts, and Georgia publishes no agreement with a country absent from it.
The United Kingdom entry carries 3 files: the 2004 agreement, the 2010 protocol and a synthesised text showing the effect of the multilateral convention. Germany's treaty has been in force since 21 December 2007, with a later protocol in force from 1 January 2015.
On the Ministry's summary table, 9 partners sit at 0% on dividends, interest and royalties alike: the United Arab Emirates, Estonia, Qatar, Malta, Bahrain, San Marino, Cyprus, Liechtenstein and Singapore. Across the whole network that table shows dividends from 0% to 15%, interest from 0% to 10% and royalties from 0% to 10%.
Which treaty you can use turns on where you are resident, and for Georgia the 183-day count that decides it runs over any continuous 12-month period ending in that tax year rather than over the calendar year. Any part of a day spent in Georgia counts as a full day.
What a treaty decides and what it does not
A treaty allocates taxing rights between the two states, article by article, then tells the state of residence how to relieve what the other state was allowed to take.
Georgian law has already narrowed the problem before any of that. A resident individual's income that is not Georgian-source, gains included, is exempt here, so foreign income rarely needs a treaty to escape Georgian tax. A non-resident pays Georgian income tax only on Georgian-source income, against a general personal rate of 20%.
What Georgia treats as its own is set by the source rules in the Tax Code: services actually rendered in Georgia, and services supplied by a Georgian resident to a recipient in another state unless they go through a foreign permanent establishment. Where the money is received makes no difference.
| Income type | What the United Kingdom and Germany treaties do with it |
|---|---|
| Business profits | Taxable only in the state of residence, unless the enterprise has a permanent establishment in the other state, and then only on the profit attributable to it |
| Dividends | The United Kingdom treaty exempts them at source, except for up to 15% on a property investment vehicle that distributes most of its income. Germany allows 0%, 5% or 10% depending on the size of the holding and the amount invested |
| Interest | Taxable only in the recipient's state, so the source state withholds nothing |
| Royalties | Taxable only in the recipient's state |
| Gains on other property | Taxable only in the state of which the seller is a resident |
| Other income | Taxable only in the recipient's state of residence, wherever it arises |
Permanent establishment is the hinge in the business profits article, and the two treaties set it differently. A building site becomes one after 12 months under the United Kingdom treaty and after 6 months under the Germany treaty, while the Tax Code equates a building site to a permanent establishment with no minimum duration at all.
For a Georgian resident, both treaties relieve by credit rather than exemption: Georgia deducts the tax paid in the other state from its own, capped at the Georgian tax on that same income. The other side is not symmetrical, and Germany exempts defined items with progression before switching to the credit method in the cases its own article lists.
A resident individual has nothing to put that credit against. The Tax Code's foreign tax credit article speaks only of an enterprise and of profit tax, and a resident individual's non-Georgian-source income is exempt in the first place.
Treaty relief when you are a Georgian tax resident
Claiming a treaty abroad starts with proof that Georgia treats you as resident, and that status is settled one tax period at a time: days that made you resident in one year are not counted again for the next.
The Revenue Service issues the residency certificate. A resident applies in electronic form, stating name and full address in Georgian and in English together with a Georgian taxpayer identification number, and the certificate comes back electronically in the approved form.
If your home country has its own residency form, you do not need the Georgian certificate at all. Present that form with a notarised Georgian translation and the tax authority must confirm your Georgian residency on it by signature and official seal, provided the form has a field for it. That is the answer when an accountant abroad sends a page to be stamped.
The order behind the certificate, Minister of Finance Order No 633, sets no fee for it, no list of supporting documents and no processing time of its own. The only timing rule in the order is the general one: 30 calendar days to decide a request or issue the document, with up to 30 further days allowed to cure a deficient application. The Revenue Service fee schedule carries no line for issuing a residency certificate.
Residency granted through the high net worth individual route works differently. It runs one tax year at a time, the documents go in again for each year, and a certificate can be requested only for the year of the application.
A certificate proves the year it covers, so a claim abroad that runs across 3 years needs the Georgian position to hold in each of them. On the high net worth route the grant itself is for a single tax year, and the certificate follows the year you applied for.
Treaty relief on money paid out of Georgia
When a Georgian payer sends income to a non-resident who has no permanent establishment here, tax comes off before the money leaves.
| Payment to a non-resident without a Georgian permanent establishment | Withheld |
|---|---|
| Dividends | 5% |
| Interest | 5% |
| Royalties | 5% |
| Other Georgian-source payments | 10% |
| Salary | 20% |
| Interest, royalties and other payments to a person registered in a preferential tax country | 15% |
A Georgian company paying a dividend to an individual withholds 5% at source, and for a resident individual that withheld tax is final rather than added to gross income.
Say a Georgian company pays a GEL 10,000 dividend to a shareholder abroad. It withholds 5%, GEL 500, and sends GEL 9,500. On a GEL 20,000 payment for other Georgian-source income the rate is 10%, so GEL 2,000 is withheld, and 15%, GEL 3,000, where the recipient is registered in a preferential tax country. A treaty can cut or remove those rates, and it is the payer who applies it at the moment of payment.
Relief on that withholding runs through the same Minister of Finance Order No 633, which gives it at source rather than by refund. The Georgian payer applies the treaty rate, or nothing at all, when it pays, then files Form No 1 before 1 April of the year after the reporting year, showing the Tax Code rate, the treaty rate and the amount withheld.
| Form | Who fills it in | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| No 1 | The Georgian payer | Reports the exemption or reduced rate applied at source |
| No 2 | The non-resident who received the income | Asks for a refund of tax already withheld in Georgia |
| No 3 | The non-resident, or the payer for what it paid | Requests a certificate of taxes paid or withheld in Georgia |
Form No 1 must carry the recipient's residency certificate from the competent authority of that country, with a notarised Georgian translation, and it is filed electronically from the taxpayer's authorised page on rs.ge. That foreign certificate needs no apostille and no legalisation. Income is entered by code, 01 for interest through to 07 for other income, with each type listed separately.
Relief on dividends, interest and royalties goes only to the beneficial owner: the person with full rights to use, enjoy and dispose of the income who is not bound to pass it on. An agent, nominal holder or intermediary does not qualify even as the direct recipient, and relief is refused where the beneficial owner turns out to be resident in a third state.
Getting the rate wrong at the moment of payment means chasing the money afterwards through the Form No 2 refund route, so where a payment is already scheduled and the treaty position is not obvious, ask us to check it before the money moves. The answer comes back as a written opinion signed by David Sisvadze.
Individual entrepreneurs on the 1% regime
An individual entrepreneur holding small business status pays 1% on taxable income under the regime, and that taxable income is Georgian-source income, excluding salary and the income types the Government lists.
Work you do from Georgia for clients abroad is Georgian-source income, because the source rules reach services rendered in Georgia and services supplied by a Georgian resident to a recipient in another state. Where the client sits, and where the money lands, does not move it.
Say you invoice GEL 200,000 in a year under the regime. The Georgian charge is 1%, GEL 2,000, and it rests on the source of the income rather than on anything a treaty says.
What the other country does with the same income is a question for its own law, read through the treaty. The business profits article of the United Kingdom and Germany treaties keeps those profits where the enterprise is resident, unless it has a permanent establishment in the other state. A treaty settles which state may tax; it does not rewrite the Georgian rate.
When there is no treaty with your country
The Ministry of Finance list does not include the United States, and it does not include Russia.
The United States publishes the opposite position. The IRS lists Georgia among its income tax treaty partners and states that Georgia is covered by the 1973 treaty with the former Soviet Union, the only document that page offers. That is a conflict rather than an omission, because the Georgian page carries the rest of the network with its in-force dates.
The United States taxes its citizens and resident aliens on worldwide income from all sources wherever they live, so an American living in Georgia still has a US return to file whatever Georgia has already taken.
Georgian law does not depend on the outcome. A resident's non-Georgian-source income is exempt with or without a treaty, a non-resident is taxed only on Georgian-source income either way, and the withholding rates above apply in full wherever no treaty reduces them.
The United States and Russia are absent from the Ministry of Finance list of treaties in force. If you are planning around treaty relief in Georgia from either country, you are planning around something Georgia does not publish as being in force. Get that position confirmed in writing before you build anything on it.
The MLI and reading the right text
The multilateral convention modifies 34 of the 58 treaties, so the bilateral agreement on its own is not always the text that applies. Georgia signed it on 7 June 2017 and Parliament ratified it on 27 December 2018.
The United Kingdom entry shows what that means in practice. Its synthesised text carries a 12-month construction threshold and a dividend article rewritten by the 2010 protocol, while the 2004 agreement published beside it still shows 6 months and a set of rates that were deleted. The Ministry's own summary table matches the synthesised text rather than the older file.
The principal purposes test applies to the United Kingdom treaty: a benefit is denied for an item of income or capital where it is reasonable to conclude that obtaining it was one of the principal purposes of an arrangement, unless granting it would accord with the object and purpose of the provisions.
Frequently asked questions
How many double tax treaties does Georgia have?
58 are in force, counted as countries and territories on the Ministry of Finance list. Of those 58, 34 are modified by the multilateral convention.
Which countries have a tax treaty with Georgia?
The Ministry of Finance publishes the full list, and the United Kingdom and Germany are on it with in-force dates and protocols. The list puts 9 partners at 0% on dividends, interest and royalties alike, Estonia, Cyprus, Malta and Singapore among them. Across the network, dividend rates run from 0% to 15% and interest and royalty rates from 0% to 10%.
Does Georgia have a tax treaty with the United States?
Not on the Georgian side. The United States is absent from the Ministry of Finance list of treaties in force, while the IRS publishes that Georgia is covered by the 1973 treaty with the former Soviet Union. The two administrations do not publish the same answer.
Does Georgia have a tax treaty with Russia?
No. Russia is not on the Ministry of Finance list of treaties in force, so a payment between the two countries falls under each state's own rules.
If I pay 1% tax in Georgia, do I still owe tax at home?
That turns on your home country's law and on the treaty between the two states, not on Georgia. Georgia charges 1% because the income is Georgian-source, and the business profits article of the United Kingdom and Germany treaties allocates those profits to the state of residence where there is no permanent establishment in the other state. Paying in Georgia does not by itself close a foreign filing obligation.
Do I need a tax residency certificate to claim treaty benefits?
Usually yes. Either the Revenue Service issues its own certificate electronically after your application, or it confirms your Georgian residency on your home country's residency form with signature and official seal, provided that form has a field for it.
How do I claim treaty relief on tax withheld in Georgia?
Relief is given at source by the payer, not claimed by you afterwards. The Georgian payer applies the treaty rate when it pays and files Form No 1 before 1 April of the following year, attaching your residency certificate with a notarised Georgian translation. Where full Georgian tax was withheld instead, the money comes back only through Form No 2, which the non-resident files.
Can I be a tax resident of two countries at the same time?
Under domestic law, yes: Georgia applies its own day count and the other country applies its own test. The United Kingdom and Germany treaties settle the clash for an individual in 4 steps, permanent home, then the state of closer personal and economic relations, then habitual abode, then nationality, with the competent authorities deciding by mutual agreement if none of those settles it. Under the Germany treaty no benefit may be claimed until they agree.
Does my foreign tax residency certificate need an apostille for Georgia?
No. A residency certificate issued by a foreign competent authority needs no apostille and no legalisation to be filed in Georgia. It does need a notarised Georgian translation when it goes in with Form No 1 or Form No 2.
Does Georgia tax my foreign income if there is no treaty?
No. A resident individual's income that is not Georgian-source, gains included, is exempt in Georgia whether or not a treaty exists. The catch is the source rule: work done from Georgia for foreign clients is Georgian-source income, not foreign income.