Business Immigration: Relocating Companies and Employees to Georgia

Relocating Employees to Georgia

Companies come to Georgia for the tax regime, the cost base, and the speed of company formation, then discover that the immigration side runs on a different clock. Since March 2026, a foreign hire needs both a right to stay and a separate right to work, and both normally depend on a Georgian employing entity already being in place.

For a team move, the chain runs: register the entity → issue compliant employment documentation → obtain work authorisation for each hire → file the matching residence permits for employees and their families. Immigration visas in the D categories may also be needed for entry depending on nationality and route. Each step depends on the one before it, and the only step you can reliably compress with money is the last one.

I run this as a project: a written plan with dependencies and realistic dates that HR can work from, so candidates get honest answers about start dates instead of optimistic ones.

Founders and Entrepreneurs

Founders relocating to Georgia have a structuring question before they have an immigration question. The choice between an LLC, a branch, and a representative office affects hiring, tax, and permanent-establishment exposure, and it should be made before registration rather than unwound afterwards.

The point most founders miss: holding shares is not the same as performing work. A founder or director who actually carries out work in Georgia generally needs authorisation just as an employee does, even where the company is entirely their own. The route differs depending on whether you are appointed as a director, employed under a contract, or operating as a sole entrepreneur. The corporate documents then need to describe your role consistently with whatever the permit application says.

Company formation itself is fast; registration at the House of Justice is typically completed within one to two business days once the documents are in order. The realistic bottleneck for foreign founders is the preparation stage: legalised corporate documents, certified translations, and a power of attorney if you are not signing in person.

Employer Compliance Obligations

Employing foreign nationals now carries duties that sit on the company as well as the individual. An employer that engages an unauthorised worker faces its own penalty, separate from any fine imposed on the employee. Four practical obligations are worth building into process:

• Verify before the start date. Authorisation is checked at hiring, not after onboarding. It is far easier to delay an offer than to unwind an unlawful engagement.
• Keep the documentation consistent. The employment contract, job description, and permit application should describe the same role.
• Track expiries centrally. Permits lapse quietly; a single owned calendar with reminders at 90 and 30 days prevents the most common failure.
• Audit pre-2026 hires. Do not assume staff engaged before the regime took effect were grandfathered. Check.

Georgian employment law applies to those staff in full, which means contracts, terminations, and redundancies have to comply with the Labour Code as well. Where a project ends and foreign employees have to be released, the termination has to be lawful on both fronts at once. See labour and employment law.

Why Work With Me

At PwC Georgia I advised corporate clients on structuring, employment, and compliance, including a major bank on a mass redundancy and several M&A transactions. That is the perspective I bring to relocation work: the immigration filing is one workstream inside a corporate decision, and it should be costed and scheduled like one. Work is handled directly, in Georgian, English, German, or Russian, and coordinated with corporate and contract matters where they overlap.