Before opening a private tutoring centre, the decisive legal fact must be stated plainly: Georgia has no special licence or permit regulation for tutoring centres. The commercial provision of educational services falls under the general regime of the Law of Georgia on Entrepreneurs: the choice lies between an individual entrepreneur and an entrepreneurial company, registration is mandatory, and its procedure is precisely defined by the statute. On this page we explain which form is sensible when, what registration requires, and where the boundary runs between individual professional activity and an enterprise.
The Absence of Special Regulation — an Explanatory Fact
Educational legislation provides no special status for a private tutor as a separately regulated activity. A learning centre operating for profit is an ordinary business and functions under general enterprise legislation. This means there is no decision to “obtain a licence” — there is a decision about the legal form and the registration process.
The Concept of the Entrepreneur and the Legal Forms
Under Article 2 of the law, an entrepreneur is a natural or legal person who has an enterprise. An enterprise is an organised system for carrying out entrepreneurial activity, and entrepreneurial activity is a lawful, non-one-time, independent and organised activity carried out for profit. It is carried out in the form of an individual entrepreneur or an entrepreneurial company.
The statute itself rests on dispositive norms: the charter or a partners’ agreement of a general partnership, limited partnership, limited liability company or cooperative may lay down rules differing from the statute unless the norm is imperative, and the charter may also cover matters the statute leaves unregulated.
The difference lies in liability. An individual entrepreneur is not a legal person and is personally liable, with all of their property, to creditors for obligations arising from the activity. An entrepreneurial company is a legal person: the law recognises general partnership, limited partnership, limited liability company, joint-stock company and cooperative. For a tutoring centre the practical choice usually lies between the individual entrepreneur and the limited liability company.