Labor residence permits in Georgia require documentary proof of income, with a threshold of 50,000 lari per year in declared income. This requirement is calculated over a 12-month period prior to document submission and amounts to approximately 4,170 lari per month, or around $18,500 per year at the current exchange rate. The requirement is tied to each foreigner individually: if they are a self-employed entrepreneur, they demonstrate their own turnover, while an employer of a hired worker must demonstrate 50,000 lari in turnover per each foreign employee on staff. Certified educational and medical institutions are an exception, with a lower threshold of 35,000 lari set for them.
Hired employees face an additional requirement: their salary must be no less than five times the minimum subsistence level, which according to Sakstat data as of the end of 2025 amounts to approximately 1,250–1,300 lari per month. In practice, agencies budget around 1,500 lari net. For context: the small business status limit in Georgia is 500,000 lari per year, meaning the residence permit requirement is 10 times lower, making it realistically achievable even for a freelancer operating alone.
However, not everyone must confirm turnover of 50,000 lari. The requirement applies to self-employed entrepreneurs older than 3 months at the time of first application for labor residence permits and at each renewal, to hired employees through their employer, and to company owners applying for residence permits through their own firm. But new businesses—self-employed entrepreneurs or companies younger than 3 months with no more than 3 foreign hired employees—are granted an exemption starting July 9, 2026: they can apply for their first labor residence permit without financial indicators. Additionally, for other bases of residence permits, such as those for education, family, or real estate, the turnover requirement does not apply at all, as those operate under different criteria.
The exemption for new businesses has an important limitation: residence permits will be granted for only 6 months, and upon renewal, the turnover requirement will already be verified. The logic is simple—businesses are given time to gain traction, but are not exempted from the threshold permanently. Entrepreneurs must prepare to meet this requirement from their first month of operation.
Turnover is counted as declared income, not account balance and not profit. The Agency for the Development of Public Services verifies the figure against the database of the Revenue Service, which is populated by your declarations in your personal cabinet at rs.ge. It is important to understand that turnover includes all declared income from self-employed activities, including income from foreign clients. If income arrives in foreign currency, it is converted to lari at the exchange rate of the National Bank of Georgia on the date of payment receipt. Transfers to oneself, account top-ups, and refunds are not counted as turnover—income must come from external sources. The key rule: undeclared income does not exist for the agency at all, even if money is sitting in the account.
To confirm turnover, several steps must be completed. First, verify all declarations in your personal cabinet at rs.ge for the 12-month period and check each period, as one missed month means loss of part of the turnover. If any months are missing, they must be filed retroactively—overdue declarations are accepted backdated with a penalty, and after processing, the income enters the turnover database. Start with the oldest months and allow sufficient time before submission.
Then order a certificate of turnover and paid taxes from the Revenue Service through your personal cabinet at rs.ge or a service center, allowing up to 10 days for preparation. Upon receiving the certificate, verify that the amount exceeds the threshold with a margin. To the turnover certificate, you must add a certificate of VAT status, a certificate of the number of foreign workers employed by you, and a bank statement showing the account balance. In separate cases, the agency may request the enterprise size category. After gathering the complete set of documents, they are submitted to the House of Justice.