Georgian government has introduced a new type of tax exemption, a status of “international Company”. This status can be obtained by the private companies working in different fields, and it can drastically lower the tax bill for those companies.
In particular, income earned by "international companies" that operate in the field of information technology services or ship rental, transportation, and similar activities, will receive tax incentives. For these companies, a corporate income tax rate of 5% (instead of 15%) will apply. Wage tax will be assessed at a 5% rate instead of 20%. Moreover, withholding tax on dividend distributions will be 0% instead of 5%. In addition, “international companies” will be exempted from property tax (except land) on the assets used in economic activities allowed by the above-mentioned decree of the Georgian government. Lastly, such companies can decrease the basis of corporate income tax with expenses of salary paid to Georgian resident employees and R&D costs.
Gela Barshovi, managing partner of tax and audit firm TP Solutions, talked about the newly unveiled tax incentives, as he notes, this status will most likely be highly sought-after by the IT companies operating in Georgia.
“International companies in some cases will be exempted from property tax, so they will be able to decrease the level of corporate income tax, wil salary expenses paid to Georgian residents and R&D costs conducted on Georgian territory, so at the end of the day they might end up paying 0% corporate income tax and only 5% wage tax which is of course highly beneficial for the companies.
First of all, only two types of business can obtain the status of international company, those are IT companies and Shipping and Marine companies. Another precondition is that they should have at least two years of experience in the field and for IT business, they should be doing IT activities based on service contract, it means that they should not build their own application or programme, they should be building an application for someone else. they should provide information that they are a real company and not only a letterbox company.
I think that the interest for obtaining this status will be high, especially from the IT field, because now the status of international company can be used for deducting a wider range of services and it is much more beneficial than the virtual zone person status,”- Mr Barshovi told BMG Checkpoints.
