Tax Audit Support in Georgia

A tax audit in Georgia usually starts with a letter from the Revenue Service. There are two types, a desk audit handled by correspondence and a field audit held at your place of business, and each has its own rules on notice and duration. The result depends mostly on whether the records that support your declarations exist and match what was filed.

What Triggers a Tax Audit in Georgia

The Revenue Service does not publish the criteria it uses to select a business for audit. Its system cross-references the declarations you file against data it already holds: VAT input and output positions, bank and payment data, the filings of your clients and suppliers, and your own filing history. A review is triggered far more often by a discrepancy in that data than by chance.

The system is built to find these patterns:

• late or missing declarations, especially zero declarations skipped in months with no income
• a VAT position that changes sharply, in particular a large input VAT reclaim compared with your usual filings
• turnover or an activity that does not fit the activity code you registered
• turnover that stays close to the ₾100,000 VAT registration threshold or the ₾500,000 Small Business Status ceiling while the registration stays the same
• a transaction your client or supplier declared one way and you declared another

One of these on its own does not make an audit inevitable. The risk depends on how consistent your filings are with what happened in the business.

Individual entrepreneurs with Small Business Status, LLCs and VAT-registered businesses owe a monthly declaration by the 15th of the following month, including months with no income, so a skipped zero declaration counts as a missing one. The activity code matters most under Small Business Status, because invoices that describe an excluded activity, such as consulting, conflict with the 1% regime.

Desk Audit and Field Audit: Procedure, Notice Period and Duration

A desk audit is run from the Revenue Service’s side, with no visit to your premises. It uses the information the Revenue Service already holds, plus the documents and explanations it requests from you. What usually arrives is a letter asking you to send named documents or to explain one mismatch, and you reply in writing.

Many desk audits end at that stage, either because the documents and the explanation answer the query or because an error is corrected and the shortfall paid. When a field audit does follow a desk audit, a discrepancy that the correspondence did not settle is among the more common causes.

A field audit is the more formal procedure. An authorised Revenue Service officer orders it, and it is carried out at your place of business. Notice comes in writing or electronically, no later than 10 working days ahead, and the audit must then open within 30 days of the day the notice reached you. The standard length is about three months, and the head of the Revenue Service can approve an extension of two more.

Question	Desk audit	Field audit
Where it takes place	At the Revenue Service, from its own records	At your place of business
Advance notice	No site visit, so no visit notice	At least 10 working days, written or electronic
Duration	Shorter, and faster when requests are answered promptly	About 3 months, extendable by 2
How it ends	Resolved by correspondence, or followed by a field audit	A written tax act

Your Rights During a Tax Audit

You have the right to a representative for the length of an audit, and that person can be an accountant, a tax adviser or a lawyer. In a desk audit the representative answers the Revenue Service’s questions by correspondence. In a field audit the representative can be present for the whole duration.

The procedure gives you three further protections:

• notice at least 10 working days before a field audit begins
• a duration of about three months, extended by two more only with the approval of the head of the Revenue Service
• findings issued as a written tax act, not as a verbal conclusion or an informal demand

A representative checks that each of these is respected. The representative also makes sure document requests are answered completely and on time, because a partial or late answer reads as evasive even when nothing is being hidden.

Revenue Service notices and the correspondence about a filing query are written in Georgian. If you do not read Georgian, you need a representative who can explain exactly what a notice requires.

Documents the Revenue Service Requests and How Long to Keep Records

The baseline record is the tax source document defined in Article 72 of the Tax Code, which in practice means your invoices and receipts. Each one has to be dated, identify both parties, describe what was supplied, state its value and exist in at least two identical copies, one for each party.

These are the records to keep and how long to keep them:

• invoices and receipts, which show both parties, the date, what was supplied and its value, kept for at least 3 years after the end of the calendar year
• contracts and engagement terms, which show the agreement for each material invoice, kept alongside the invoices they support
• bank statements and payment confirmations, which show when each payment landed and in which currency, kept for at least 3 years from the end of the year and longer if disputed
• accounting records for SARAS statements, which show the year the financial statements describe, kept beyond 3 years for as long as the reporting category applies
• activity code and registration documents, which show what the business is registered to do against what it invoices
• travel records, a lease and utility bills, if you rely on where the work was performed to establish Georgian-source income

The ordinary statute of limitations for a tax assessment in Georgia is three years, so an audit can ordinarily go back three years. An invoice issued in March 2026 has to be kept at least until the end of 2029. If the Revenue Service has already raised a question about a year, keep that year’s records until the question is settled, even after the three years have passed. For companies in a reporting category, SARAS financial statements and their supporting records are often requested alongside a tax audit, although they are legally separate filings.

Tax Audit Findings, Penalties and Appeals in Georgia

A field audit ends with a tax act, the formal written document that sets out the findings. A conclusion given verbally on the day does not replace it.

Underpaid tax falls under the general penalty rules of the Tax Code, which add two charges. Interest is added for every day the balance stays unpaid after the deadline, and a declaration that showed too little tax brings a penalty in addition to the tax itself. Tax is paid in lari from a Georgian bank account under the single treasury code 101001000.

A tax act is not final if you disagree with it. An appeal goes first to the Dispute Resolution Council at the Ministry of Finance and then to court. Each stage of a tax dispute has a fixed statutory time limit, counted from the date you received the previous decision.

An audit does not by itself revoke Small Business Status. The status is affected by what the audit finds, mainly income from an excluded activity or turnover above the ₾500,000 ceiling in two consecutive years, and each is assessed under its own rules.

How to Prepare Before a Tax Audit Starts

An audit checks the records that were made at the time of each transaction. Under Article 72 a tax source document is dated and drawn up when the transaction takes place. A version rebuilt afterwards from memory, or from the bank statement by itself, does not meet that requirement.

These steps put the records in order before any letter arrives:

1. File every monthly declaration, including the months with no income. Months already missed are filed one by one through accounting restoration, at ₾270 per month of arrears.
2. Match the wording of your invoices and contracts to your registered activity code.
3. Convert foreign income to lari at the National Bank of Georgia’s official rate on the date each payment landed.
4. Keep the contract, both copies of the invoice and the bank statement for every material transaction.
5. Register for VAT when the threshold is crossed. VAT registration becomes mandatory once taxable turnover passes ₾100,000 in any continuous 12 months.
6. Keep your own month-by-month log of filings and payments, because pulling a tidy history out of rs.ge is not always simple.
7. Correct an error in a filed declaration before the Revenue Service finds it. Interest and penalties are usually lower the earlier that happens.

Advance Tax Ruling in Georgia: Application, Response Time and When to Use It

An advance tax ruling, provided for in Article 47 of the Tax Code, sets out how the Revenue Service will tax a specific transaction or arrangement before it is carried out. The ruling is in writing and binds the Revenue Service.

It is a formal application with a fee. The statutory response time is 90 days, and a complex request can take considerably longer in practice.

A ruling suits a significant transaction where the tax treatment is unclear:

• a restructuring
• a cross-border financing structure
• a real estate transaction with an unusual structure
• an arrangement whose income source or permanent establishment status the ordinary rules leave open

For routine questions about Small Business Status or an ordinary LLC, the cost and the waiting time are rarely justified. We prepare the application where a transaction needs one.

Tax Audit Support Prices

Audit support is quoted after a free 30-minute first consultation. On that call we read the letter or notice and scope the work.

Work	Price	What it covers
First consultation	Free	30 minutes, to scope the audit and the work
Tax consultation	₾250 an hour plus VAT	Specific questions answered, with a written summary afterwards
Audit preparation and representation	Quoted after the consultation	Records put in order, requests answered, representation in a desk or field audit

Clients on a monthly accounting package already have their declarations, General Journal and rs.ge account managed by us, and Revenue Service notifications and requests are processed as part of every package. Tax advice is not part of the Lite and Business packages and is charged separately. The Premium package includes 30 minutes a month of senior tax consulting by video call. Tax, interest and penalties are paid by you to the Revenue Service and are not part of our fee.