Tax residency without 183 days costs 3 million lari — or a three-year income record

The ordinary route to Georgian tax residency is physical presence of 183 days or more within any twelve consecutive months. The window is rolling, which is the detail people get wrong: it is not January to December, so days counted from an August arrival run through to the following July. Presence is evidenced by passport stamps, boarding passes and flight history. Certain categories of day, such as those spent on medical treatment, are treated differently. The status arises automatically for the relevant tax year once the threshold is met, but you still need the certificate issued through the Revenue Service's portal if your home tax authority is going to accept it.

The alternative grants residency on economic ties and needs no days at all. Two conditions must both be met. First, a wealth or income test, satisfied by either verified assets above 3,000,000 lari or annual income above 200,000 lari in each of the last three years. Second — and this is the part commonly dropped from summaries — a Georgian connection, satisfied by either a valid Georgian residence permit or citizenship, or at least 25,000 lari of Georgian-source income in the tax year before you apply. Meeting the wealth test alone gets you nowhere; it is the pairing that qualifies.

Applications go to the Revenue Service in person, through an authorised representative or electronically, which means the process does not require you to be in the country. The file is proof of wealth or income, valuation reports for any property relied on, and evidence of Georgian-source income where that is the connecting condition. If the documents satisfy the requirements, the Revenue Service forwards the case to the Minister of Finance within seven working days with a proposal to grant the status. Practitioners put the realistic end-to-end timeline at around three to four months. The status is annual, so the document pack has to be refreshed each year rather than filed once.

Both of the sources behind these figures are professional advisory publications rather than the statute, and one of them carries an internal inconsistency on the property element — a sign that the HNWI rules are summarised loosely even by people who work with them. The thresholds given here are the ones two independent advisers agree on, but the regime is set by ministerial rules and the exact wording governs. Before you restructure anything around this, get the current text confirmed in writing by a Georgian tax adviser, and be clear with them about whether a treaty between Georgia and your current country of residence changes where your income is actually taxed. Tax residency in Georgia does not by itself end a claim from somewhere else.