I am on the 1% Small Business regime. Does the reverse charge still apply to me?

The mechanism is triggered by receiving a service from a non-resident, not by which income-tax regime you are on. Being on the 1% regime answers a different question. If you buy from foreign suppliers, this is worth checking rather than assuming it does not reach you.

Is this the same as registering for VAT at 100,000 GEL?

No. Registration is triggered by your own taxable turnover over a rolling 12 months. The reverse charge is triggered by a specific transaction — a service bought from a non-resident. They are separate provisions with separate triggers.

Does Google Ads spend really count?

Advertising bought from a non-resident platform is the textbook example of a service supplied to a resident by a non-resident. The supplier does not account for Georgian VAT, which is precisely the situation the reverse charge exists to cover.

Eighteen percent of what you paid for the service, under Art. 169. On 400 GEL of monthly advertising that is about 72 GEL a month, which is often more over a year than the 1% owed on the income the advertising produced.

What if the supplier already charged me VAT?

That is a fact worth establishing before you calculate anything, and it is one of the things to raise with an accountant. Some foreign suppliers do register locally in some countries; the correct treatment depends on what actually happened on your invoice.

Where can I read the law myself?

Art. 166 and Art. 169 of the Tax Code of Georgia, at matsne.gov.ge — the official portal of the Legislative Herald of Georgia, which publishes and maintains the authoritative text.

Reverse-charge VAT on Google, Meta and AWS in Georgia

When a non-resident company supplies you with a service, Georgian law makes you — the resident recipient — the tax agent for the VAT on that purchase. The rate is 18%. This is separate from your 1% turnover tax and separate from VAT registration: it is triggered by what you buy, not by what you earn. Google Ads, AWS, Meta, Figma, Notion and most foreign software subscriptions are exactly the sort of purchase it covers.

The liability comes from what you buy, not what you earn

Almost everything written about the 1% regime is about income: what counts as turnover, what rate applies, when to declare. The reverse charge runs the other way. It attaches to a purchase.

Where a non-resident company supplies a service to a resident of Georgia, the law makes the resident the tax agent for the VAT on that transaction. You calculate it and you pay it. The foreign supplier does not, which is the entire point of the mechanism — it is how a country collects VAT from companies it has no jurisdiction over.

That is why this catches people. Google is not going to send you a Georgian VAT invoice. Nothing about the transaction looks like a tax event; it looks like a card payment for advertising.

Georgian Tax Code Art. 166 (reverse charge) — matsne.gov.ge

The rate is 18%

The standard VAT rate applies to these transactions. Eighteen percent of what you paid for the service.

It is worth being concrete about how small a purchase this reaches. A 400 GEL month of Google Ads is roughly 72 GEL. Spread across a year of ordinary tooling — hosting, advertising, design software, a CRM — the annual figure is frequently larger than the 1% tax on the income those tools helped earn.

That comparison is the reason this page exists. Someone diligently filing 1% every month can be quietly accruing a larger liability in a completely different tax.

Georgian Tax Code Art. 169 (standard rate) — matsne.gov.ge

It is not the same thing as VAT registration

These get confused constantly, and they are two different mechanisms with two different triggers.

VAT registration is about your own turnover: cross 100,000 GEL of taxable supply over a rolling 12 months and you must register. That is a threshold you grow into.

The reverse charge is about a transaction you entered into. It is triggered by receiving a service from a non-resident, not by the size of your business.

So "I am on the 1% regime" and "I am under the VAT threshold" are answers to a different question than the one this page asks. If you are unsure how the two interact in your specific case, that is exactly the question to take to an accountant — it is a common and reasonable thing to be unsure about.

Georgian Tax Code Art. 165 (registration) vs Art. 166 (reverse charge)

Which purchases are typically caught

Advertising bought from a foreign platform: Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, X, TikTok.

Cloud and hosting: AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, Vercel, Cloudflare, DigitalOcean.

Software and tooling billed from abroad: Figma, Notion, Slack, Adobe, GitHub, JetBrains, Canva.

Professional and platform services supplied by a non-resident — consulting, design, development, and the fees platforms charge for connecting you to clients.

What matters is not the category but the supplier: whether the company providing the service is a non-resident. A subscription bought from a Georgian company is an ordinary domestic purchase and this does not apply.

How to find out what you have actually spent

Most people have no idea of the total, because the charges are small, monthly and spread across cards. The figure only becomes real once it is added up.

Your card and bank statements already contain the answer. Look for recurring foreign-currency charges to companies with no Georgian entity behind them — the same names appear month after month once you start looking.

OnePercent does this from the statements you already upload: it identifies purchases from known non-resident suppliers, prices each one in GEL at the National Bank rate for the date it was charged, and shows the 18% as an estimate per month. It is flagged for you to check, not asserted as a debt.

What this page does not tell you

It does not tell you which return to file, on what date, or how to remit. Those mechanics depend on your own registration position and on details that are not settled by the two articles above, and a page that invented a specific procedure would be confidently wrong for some of the people reading it.

What is stated here is the part that is stable and sourced: the mechanism in Art. 166, the 18% in Art. 169, and the fact that neither depends on your turnover.

Take the total to an accountant, or read the current text yourself at matsne.gov.ge, which is the authoritative version maintained by the Legislative Herald of Georgia. Arriving with a number already worked out makes that a much shorter conversation.

Tax Code of Georgia — matsne.gov.ge (Legislative Herald of Georgia)

FAQ

I am on the 1% Small Business regime. Does the reverse charge still apply to me?: The mechanism is triggered by receiving a service from a non-resident, not by which income-tax regime you are on. Being on the 1% regime answers a different question. If you buy from foreign suppliers, this is worth checking rather than assuming it does not reach you.
Is this the same as registering for VAT at 100,000 GEL?: No. Registration is triggered by your own taxable turnover over a rolling 12 months. The reverse charge is triggered by a specific transaction — a service bought from a non-resident. They are separate provisions with separate triggers.
Does Google Ads spend really count?: Advertising bought from a non-resident platform is the textbook example of a service supplied to a resident by a non-resident. The supplier does not account for Georgian VAT, which is precisely the situation the reverse charge exists to cover.
How much is it?: Eighteen percent of what you paid for the service, under Art. 169. On 400 GEL of monthly advertising that is about 72 GEL a month, which is often more over a year than the 1% owed on the income the advertising produced.
What if the supplier already charged me VAT?: That is a fact worth establishing before you calculate anything, and it is one of the things to raise with an accountant. Some foreign suppliers do register locally in some countries; the correct treatment depends on what actually happened on your invoice.
Where can I read the law myself?: Art. 166 and Art. 169 of the Tax Code of Georgia, at matsne.gov.ge — the official portal of the Legislative Herald of Georgia, which publishes and maintains the authoritative text.

Sources

Georgian Tax Code Art. 166 (reverse charge) — matsne.gov.ge
Georgian Tax Code Art. 169 (standard rate) — matsne.gov.ge
Georgian Tax Code Art. 165 (registration) vs Art. 166 (reverse charge)
Tax Code of Georgia — matsne.gov.ge (Legislative Herald of Georgia)

This guide summarises published Georgian regulations and cites its sources. It is not legal or tax advice, and it cannot account for your particular circumstances. You remain responsible for what you file.

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