The profit tax system that came into force on January 1, 2017, in Georgia aims to create a favorable business environment, accelerate economic growth, and improve tax administration. This system is based on the distributed profit taxation regime, similar to the one implemented in Estonia.

The Estonian model of Corporate Income Taxation (CIT) that came into force on January 1, 2017, in Georgia is based on the distributed profit taxation regime, according to which retained corporate income is tax-free, and profit is taxed at 15% only when distributed.

More than three decades ago economists famously concluded that tax compliance is rather irrational behavior. Literature, across a wide range of disciplines, has since been overflowing with analysis as to why we see so much tax compliance in the modern world. The academic literature is concerned with why people pay so much tax or why so many people pay taxes, therefore policy-makers can gain an understanding of the underlying mechanisms, which thus allows them to design appropriate policy actions to boost revenue efforts.

On November 19, ISET was visited by Mr. Alan Fuchs of the World Bank Group, whose presentation, 'Taxing Tobacco in Georgia: The welfare and distributional gains of quitting smoking’, delved into the welfare and distributional impact of increasing taxes on tobacco in Georgia.

At the initiative of the Government of Georgia, a new model of corporate taxation was introduced in 2017. The so-called Estonian Model of Corporate Income Tax (CIT) reform envisaged a transition to a model wherein enterprises would only be taxed on profit distribution.