Bring goods across Georgia's border, whether through Poti's port, Tbilisi's airport or one of the land crossings, and the Revenue Service assesses three things before release: customs duty, import VAT and, for a specific list of goods, excise. Georgia runs one of the simpler tariff structures in the region, and for most importers the actual rate turns less on haggling over classification than on one question: does the shipment qualify for duty-free treatment under a free trade agreement. Here is the tariff structure itself, what sets your rate, and what you actually pay once VAT and excise are added on top.
Georgia's tariff structure: three bands, most of it duty-free
Georgia charges import duty in three bands, set out under the Customs Code of Georgia and the country's WTO-bound tariff schedule: 0%, 5% or 12%, depending entirely on what the goods are rather than on where they come from before any trade agreement is applied.
| Band | Typical goods |
|---|---|
| 0% | Raw materials and semi-finished goods imported for re-export, goods in transit or bonded storage, humanitarian aid, grain, and some medicines. Roughly 90% of imports fall here |
| 5% | Most medicines not already at 0%, large equipment and machinery, and other means of production |
| 12% | Agricultural products such as meat, dairy and fresh produce, and construction materials such as cement, asphalt, brick and paper - broadly, categories Georgia also produces domestically |
The pattern is consistent once you see it: Georgia keeps duty at zero on inputs businesses need to produce or re-export something else, and reserves the higher bands mostly for finished agricultural and construction goods that compete with domestic production. A shipment of industrial equipment and a shipment of imported cheese can sit at opposite ends of that range even though both are ordinary commercial imports.
HS codes and classification: what actually sets your rate
Which band a shipment falls into is a function of its commodity code, not its invoice description. Georgia classifies imports under the Foreign Economic Activity National Commodity Nomenclature, an 11-digit extension of the international Harmonized System that customs authorities worldwide use to identify goods. The declarant assigns the code on the customs declaration, and the Revenue Service verifies it against the actual goods.
This is the single most common place an import gets expensive for the wrong reason. Two genuinely similar products can sit in different HS chapters with different duty bands, and a code chosen carelessly, or copied from a supplier's paperwork without checking it against Georgia's own nomenclature, can push a shipment into the 12% band when the correct classification would have put it at 0% or 5%. Getting the code right before the shipment moves, not after customs queries it, is the actual work of clearing goods cheaply, which is why classification is the first thing we do before quoting a landed cost.
Import VAT: 18%, and how it is actually calculated
Import VAT is charged at the standard 18% rate under the VAT chapter of the Tax Code of Georgia, on top of and separately from any customs duty owed. The taxable base is the customs value, broadly the price paid plus freight and insurance to the Georgian border, with any duty and excise already assessed added into that base before the 18% is applied. VAT is charged again on top of duty rather than instead of it, which is the detail most first-time importers miss when estimating landed cost.
Import VAT applies at the border regardless of whether the importing business is itself registered for VAT domestically. That is a genuinely different mechanism from the reverse charge VAT that applies to services bought from abroad, covered in full in VAT in Georgia: reverse charge is a self-assessment on a service purchase that an unregistered business pays as a real cost, while import VAT on physical goods is collected by customs at the point of entry, before the goods are even released. A VAT-registered importer can generally reclaim import VAT as input VAT in the same way it reclaims VAT on domestic purchases, which narrows the real cost to a cash-flow timing question rather than a permanent one; an unregistered importer pays it outright.
It is easy to read "VAT on things bought from abroad" as one rule and assume it covers both cases. It does not. Reverse charge applies to services purchased from a foreign supplier, hosting, software subscriptions, a foreign contractor, and is self-assessed by the buyer regardless of the buyer's VAT status. Import VAT applies to physical goods crossing the border and is assessed and collected by customs as part of clearance, before release. A business can owe one, the other, both or neither in a given month depending entirely on whether what it bought was a service or a physical good.
Excise: what it applies to, on top of everything else
Excise is a further, separate charge layered on top of duty and VAT, and it only reaches a specific, short list of goods rather than imports generally: vehicles, fuel, alcohol and tobacco products.
- Vehicles: excise is set by engine capacity and the vehicle's age rather than its declared value, so an older, larger-engined car generally costs considerably more to import than a newer, smaller one of similar price
- Fuel: excise applies per unit of fuel imported, on top of duty and VAT
- Alcohol and tobacco: both carry their own excise rates, calculated alongside the standard customs duty on the same shipment
Because vehicle excise runs on engine size and age rather than price, two cars bought for the same amount can carry very different total import costs, which is worth calculating in full before committing to a purchase rather than after the vehicle has already shipped.
Free trade agreements: the practical lever for most importers
The tariff bands above are what applies by default. For most commercial importers, the number that actually matters is not the default band but whether the goods qualify for a lower or zero rate under one of Georgia's free trade agreements, since duty-free origin is the one lever that changes the calculation without changing what is being imported at all.
| Partner | Status | What it means in practice |
|---|---|---|
| European Union | DCFTA, in force since 2014 | Qualifying goods move duty-free in both directions with the correct certificate or declaration of origin |
| China | Free trade agreement, in force since 1 January 2018 | Preferential and duty-free treatment on a defined list of tariff lines, subject to origin documentation |
| Turkey | Free trade agreement in force | Reduced or duty-free treatment on qualifying goods, with some sensitive categories excluded on both sides |
| CIS states | Multilateral free trade regime dating to 1994 | Covers most former Soviet states under shared rules of origin, with Uzbekistan and Russia sitting on distinct, older legal instruments rather than the common 2000 rules-of-origin decree |
| EFTA | Free trade agreement signed 2016 | Duty-free market access with Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein |
None of this is automatic. A shipment does not get the preferential rate just because it physically originates in a partner country; it gets it because the correct certificate of origin, a movement certificate for the EU agreement, an equivalent document for the others, accompanies the declaration and the goods actually meet the agreement's origin rules rather than merely passing through the country last. Getting the origin paperwork right, not the trade agreement's existence, is the actual work involved, and it is where a shipment that should clear at 0% ends up assessed at the standard band instead.
The customs clearance process, step by step
Clearance in Georgia runs almost entirely electronically, through the Revenue Service's ASYCUDA World system, accessed via rs.ge. The process, in the order it actually happens:
- Classify and cost before the shipment moves. Assign the correct HS code, check whether a free trade agreement applies, and calculate duty, VAT and any excise up front, so the landed cost is known before anything is committed to.
- Gather the documents. A commercial invoice, packing list and transport document are the baseline. Add a certificate of origin if a preferential rate is being claimed, and any permits or certificates the specific goods require.
- File the declaration electronically. The declarant submits the customs declaration through the electronic system, assigning the HS code and declaring the customs value, with the Revenue Service verifying both against the accompanying documents.
- Customs assesses duty, VAT and excise. Based on the declared classification and value, the Revenue Service calculates what is owed and a flat processing fee applies per declaration, the lari equivalent of 5 euros for shipments under 3,000 GEL customs value and 60 euros for shipments at or above that, tripled outside normal working hours.
- Pay and release. Once the amounts due are paid, the shipment is released. A correctly classified shipment with matching documents typically clears within a day or two at Poti, Batumi or Tbilisi International Airport; a shipment that gets queried, usually over classification or a missing document, takes considerably longer.
Georgia clears goods at Poti and Batumi for sea freight, Tbilisi International Airport for air freight, and the land crossings for road freight arriving from Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan. You are not legally required to use a broker to file any of this yourself, but the process runs in Georgian and a single misclassification typically costs more than a broker's fee would have, which is why most commercial importers use customs brokerage rather than self-file.
None of this sits in isolation from the rest of what an importing business owes Georgia. A company bringing in goods for resale is an ordinary Georgian entity for every other purpose, registered the same way as any LLC, filing monthly under the same rules covered in taxes in Georgia, and booking duty, import VAT and any excise the same way accounting in Georgia records every other cost.
What you actually pay: a worked example
Duty and VAT compound rather than sit side by side, which catches people off guard the first time they estimate a landed cost. Here is the arithmetic on a shipment with a 10,000 GEL customs value.
| Step | At the standard 12% band | Same goods, qualifying for 0% under a free trade agreement |
|---|---|---|
| Customs value | 10,000 GEL | 10,000 GEL |
| Customs duty | 1,200 GEL (12%) | 0 GEL |
| Value after duty | 11,200 GEL | 10,000 GEL |
| Import VAT at 18% | 2,016 GEL | 1,800 GEL |
| Total landed cost | 13,216 GEL | 11,800 GEL |
On this example, correctly claiming a 0% origin certificate rather than defaulting to the 12% band saves 1,416 GEL on a single shipment, which is the size of gap that makes chasing the right certificate of origin worth the paperwork on anything beyond a one-off import. A VAT-registered importer can generally reclaim the import VAT line in both scenarios as input VAT, which narrows the real difference between the two columns to the duty itself plus the VAT charged on that duty, but the duty saving is real cash either way.
Free Industrial Zones, temporary admission and bonded warehouses
Three regimes sit alongside ordinary import clearance and change the calculation for specific situations rather than for imports generally.
A Free Industrial Zone enterprise imports foreign goods into the zone free of duty, VAT and excise entirely, provided the goods stay inside the zone's customs boundary or are re-exported, which is the main reason a genuine manufacturing or re-export operation looks at zone registration rather than ordinary import in the first place.
Temporary admission lets goods enter Georgia for a limited period without paying full import duty, used for exhibitions, testing, or equipment brought in for a defined project, on the condition the goods are re-exported rather than sold. A customs warehouse, separately, lets imported goods sit under customs control without duty, VAT or excise becoming due at all until the goods are actually released into free circulation, which is useful for a business holding stock before it knows its final destination.
None of these three replaces ordinary clearance for a business simply bringing goods in to sell or use in Georgia. They matter specifically for re-export, testing, exhibition and bonded-storage scenarios, and choosing between them and ordinary import is a structuring question worth raising with tax consulting before the first shipment moves, not after a lease or a customs bond is already signed.
We classify your goods against Georgia's actual tariff schedule, check whether a free trade agreement applies, and calculate duty, VAT and excise before anything is filed, so there are no surprises at the border.
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Key takeaways
- Check the HS classification before you ship, not after. The code, not the invoice description, sets whether you pay 0%, 5% or 12%.
- Confirm whether a free trade agreement applies to your goods and origin, and get the certificate of origin right - it is the single biggest lever on what you actually pay.
- Remember VAT is charged on top of duty, not instead of it, when estimating landed cost.
- If you are VAT-registered, factor in that import VAT is generally reclaimable as input VAT, which changes the real cash cost even though the border charge is the same.
- If your business is genuinely export-oriented or re-exporting, model a Free Industrial Zone or a customs warehouse against ordinary clearance before assuming standard import is your only option.
Frequently asked questions
What is the import duty rate in Georgia?
Georgia charges import duty in three bands: 0%, 5% or 12%, depending on the goods' HS classification. Around 90% of imports fall into the 0% band, with the 12% band reserved mostly for agricultural products and construction materials that compete with domestic production.
What is the import VAT rate in Georgia?
18%, charged on the customs value of the goods plus any duty and excise already assessed, separately from and on top of the customs duty itself. It applies at the border regardless of whether the importer is VAT-registered domestically.
How do I know what HS code my goods fall under?
Georgia classifies goods under the Foreign Economic Activity National Commodity Nomenclature, an 11-digit extension of the international Harmonized System. The declarant assigns the code on the customs declaration and the Revenue Service verifies it against the actual goods, which is why getting the classification checked before shipping matters more than after.
Does a free trade agreement mean my goods are automatically duty-free?
No. The goods have to meet the agreement's origin rules and the shipment has to carry the correct certificate of origin. Georgia has free trade agreements with the EU, China, Turkey, most CIS states and EFTA, but the preferential rate only applies when the origin documentation actually supports the claim.
Is import VAT the same as reverse charge VAT?
No, and they are commonly confused. Reverse charge VAT applies to services bought from a foreign supplier and is self-assessed by the buyer regardless of VAT status. Import VAT applies to physical goods crossing the border and is assessed and collected by customs during clearance, before the goods are released.
What is excise duty and which goods does it apply to?
Excise is a separate charge on top of duty and VAT, applying only to vehicles, fuel, alcohol and tobacco. Vehicle excise is set by engine capacity and the vehicle's age rather than its price, so an older, larger-engined car can cost considerably more to import than a cheaper but newer one.
How long does customs clearance take in Georgia?
A shipment with the correct HS code and matching documents typically clears within a day or two at Poti, Batumi or Tbilisi International Airport. A shipment that gets queried, usually over classification or a missing certificate, takes considerably longer.
Do I need a customs broker to import goods into Georgia?
Not legally, you can file the declaration yourself. In practice a single misclassification usually costs more than a broker's fee, and the entire process runs in Georgian, which is why most commercial importers use a broker rather than self-file.
Can I reclaim the VAT I pay on imports?
If your business is VAT-registered, generally yes, as input VAT in the same way as VAT paid on domestic purchases. An unregistered importer pays import VAT as an outright cost with no mechanism to reclaim it.
What is a customs warehouse and how is it different from a Free Industrial Zone?
A customs warehouse lets imported goods sit under customs control without duty, VAT or excise becoming due until they are released into free circulation, useful for holding stock before its final destination is decided. A Free Industrial Zone is a broader regime for an enterprise actually producing, processing or handling goods inside a designated zone, with a full exemption on qualifying activity rather than a deferral.
Does Georgia charge import duty on goods for personal relocation?
Reliefs exist for personal effects brought in on relocation, with conditions on timing, on what counts as personal use rather than commercial goods, and on the importer's residence status. It is worth checking against your specific situation before the shipment moves rather than after it arrives.