Author Archives: Ilya

How Foreigners Can Register a Sole Proprietorship in Georgia

These are the tips from an Israeli resident, who works remotely for a German company and came to register a Sole Proprietorship in Tbilisi in order to save on income taxes.

Registration of Sole Proprietorship takes place in Tbilisi Public Service Hall. The process of registration takes about 30 minutes. I recommend coming by the opening, because there will not be any lines yet, and it will be easier and faster to get a good deal for an address in Georgia.

At the entrance to the public hall, a lot of people walk around with banners, these are just those who sell the “residency address”. Residency address is s required for registration of the individual entrepreneurs. The cost of an address varies from 30 to 100 GEL. I agreed on 60 GEL.

Once agreed on the cost of the residency address cost and paid, you can go inside the public hall with the person who sold you the residency address. This person knows Georgian and he will explain everything to the Public Service Hall employee. On your part you only need a passport and phone number (It’s better to have a local number. It costs 10 GEL), an email address and 55 GEL to pay state taxes. Then you have to wait about 5 hours. You can check the status of your application online. As soon as the status becomes Active, you can return to Public Hall and pick up your paperwork. Now you are the proud owner of a business in Georgia.

The next step is the bank. At first, I went to Bank of Georgia, but they said that it is POSSIBLE to open an account , but only the next day, as they will need various documents confirming that you are the owner of the business or have a share in it. I didn’t want to wait, so I went to the neighboring (second largest) bank – TBC Bank. There they issued me new business account in 30 minutes, and said that the card would be ready tomorrow. The bank has a convenient online banking in English, everything is simple and clear. You can use your account right away.

Why open a business in Georgia? This is the most interesting part. Taxes. Giorgi Tabuashvili, the head of the revenue service of the Ministry of Finance of Georgia, said that from July 1, 2018, a preferential tax scheme has started to operate, according to which the sales tax would be 1% instead of 5%. Tabuashvili noted that starting July 1, the status of small business in Georgia is given to individuals whose income for the calendar year is up to 500 thousand Lari (more than 203,9 thousand dollars), and not 100 thousand, as it used to be (about 40.8 thousand dollars) . Moreover, if the income increases, the person will retain the status of a small business for the next 2 calendar years.

Today, I spent 115 GEL on opening a Sole Proprietorship, made a deposit of 100 GEL to activate the account, spent 10 GEL on a SIM card with a local number and 2.1 GEL on a bottle of Borjomi and a hotdog. Total: 227.1 GEL. Sole Proprietorship is open, the account is open, I am satisfied.

P.S. I registered with my Israeli passport, but as my friend says, you can also register with any foreign passport.

So what the friend of mine is trying to accomplish is to register a small business in Georgia, work remotely for a foreign company from Israel and pay 1% taxes on his income. He specifically flew in from Israel to register small business in Georgia. But, as far as I understand, he didn’t even have to come in person. But this way, the process is going to be slightly more expensive.

How to Stop Sms spam

As far as I understand, the sms spam is huge deal in Georgia. It comes to all new cell phone/SIM card owners by default. My cell phone company is Magti. Sms spam comes every day, a few times a day. Ranging from credit offers to recent prices on tomatoes in a local grocery store, it sure can annoy anyone, even with the Internet expirience. Now is the tricky question: how do i stop it? Sending back sms messages with text unsubscribe is impossible.

So here is the trick, that I’ve learned from Reddit:

1. *297# – And turn off every option, this will block most of ads from MS GROUP company.
2. *182# – is MAGTI specific, but this should be disabled by default (wont hurt to check anyways)

Time from time other messages will get trough anyways, in that case you need to turn them off manually by sending SMS to indicated number inside SMS.

The second option worked for me as a charm.

Work From Georgia – Like Airbnb but for workspaces, and it’s free

A bunch of companies coming together to share workspaces within their offices, free of charge, to encourage digital nomadism in Georgia.

Georgians are hosts at heart. That is why such a crazy project idea was even born locally.

It is almost unbelievable that so many companies across the country came together to open their office doors for free to guests around the globe. And this is done in order to put Georgia on the global map of digital nomadism and turn the country into a digital nomad hub.

Apart from hospitality, Georgia has everything that digital nomads are looking for. This is one of the reasons why the crazy idea that was born has actually taken shape.

Founded in 2019, workfromgeorgia is the first ever virtual co-working platform that offers actual workspaces at companies in Georgia to digital nomads for free.

workfromgeorgia is all about creating more authentic and comfortable travel experience, connecting people from around the world, and encouraging new friendships that transcend national borders.

The platform allows digital nomads to not only travel as tourists, but also immerse themselves in the every-day life of Georgians, to not only visit, but stay and explore. Guests can expect comfortable workspaces during daytime and fun parties after hours. workfromgeorgia gives companies a chance to do what Georgians pride themselves on the most: practice true Georgian hospitality.

– workfromgeorgia.com

Tbilisi Street Sellers

This is the milk man who is selling Milk and Matsoni on the streets of Old Tbilisi. He is screaming “Moloko, Matsoni!”

There are women who sell raspberries (“malina”) on the streets every morning, and they make their presence known by screaming “malina, malinaaa” at the top of their lungs, with the most painful inflection.

Also, there are “Jarti” guys – “JARTS VIBAREB JAARTS!! SARECKHIS MANQANAS, KONDICIONERS, MACIVARS!!”. These guys show up once a month in an old Lady and buy out old scrap metal from the locals. However, their car looks like it’s itself is up to be sold for the scrap metal.

In some neighborhoods of Tbilisi, locals wake up to “BOTLEBS VIBAREB BOTLEEEEBS”. This means that someone is up to buy empty bottles.

Some other loud keywords can be heard in Tbilisi markets. Sellers seek attention the old school way.