Georgia Bookkeeping Services

Georgia keeps cutting your income tax — the flat rate dropped to 4.99% for 2026, retroactive to January 1, and it is scheduled to keep falling toward 3.99% as long as the state hits its revenue targets. What Georgia does not cut you is slack on the calendar: the Secretary of State’s annual registration and the county PT-50P personal-property return both land on April 1, sales tax rates change county by county on the way to 8.9% in Atlanta, and the pass-through election that saves owners real federal tax is irrevocable once the filing deadline passes. We have been keeping books remotely for businesses since 2005, with dedicated bookkeepers from $75/month.

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On This Page

• Georgia’s small-business tax landscape
• The flat tax that keeps shrinking
• The pass-through election (PTET)
• April 1: the deadline pile-up
• Sales tax: 4% plus wherever you sit
• Hiring in Georgia: the payroll side
• Georgia cities we serve
• Georgia FAQs

Georgia’s Small-Business Tax Landscape

Figures from Georgia Department of Revenue (dor.georgia.gov), Georgia Secretary of State, and Georgia Department of Labor official sources, verified July 2026. This is bookkeeping context, not tax advice — confirm current-year specifics with dor.georgia.gov and your CPA before filing.

The Flat Tax That Keeps Shrinking

Georgia replaced its old tax brackets with a single flat rate in 2024 and has cut it every year since: 5.39% in 2024, 5.19% in 2025, and now 4.99% for 2026 — signed into law in May 2026 and made retroactive to January 1. The same rate applies to individuals and corporations alike, so there is exactly one income-tax number for a Georgia business to know in any given year. The catch is that it is a moving number: the law schedules further 0.125% cuts toward a 3.99% floor, but each cut depends on the state hitting revenue targets, so the rate your books should assume is the one DOR publishes for the current year — never last year’s.

The mid-year signing created a wrinkle worth knowing if you run payroll: employers withheld at 5.19% until May 11, 2026, then switched to 4.99%, which means 2026 pay records straddle two withholding rates. That is a reconciliation detail, not a problem — provided someone is actually reconciling. There was also a sweetener for anyone who paid Georgia taxes in both 2024 and 2025: a one-time credit of up to $500. Clean, current books are what let your CPA capture items like that instead of discovering them after the fact; that is the job of daily bookkeeping, not tax season.

The Pass-Through Election (PTET)

Georgia lets S corporations and partnerships elect to pay state income tax at the entity level instead of passing it through to the owners’ personal returns — the state’s answer to the federal cap on deducting state and local taxes. Because the entity pays the tax, the business deducts it federally without the SALT limitation, which for profitable pass-throughs is often worth thousands of dollars a year in federal tax. The entity-level tax rides Georgia’s flat rate, so for 2026 it is the same 4.99%.

Two things make this a bookkeeping issue rather than a tax-season footnote. First, the election is made annually by checkbox on the entity’s return — Form 600S for S corporations, Form 700 for partnerships — and it is irrevocable once the return’s due date passes, so the analysis has to happen before the deadline, on numbers that are actually current. Second, deciding whether the election pays requires a clean picture of entity profit and each owner’s share — precisely the numbers that months-behind books cannot produce. We keep the ledger current all year so the PTET conversation with your CPA is a ten-minute decision, not a reconstruction project. Behind on the books? Catch-up bookkeeping rebuilds the year fast.

April 1: The Deadline Pile-Up

Georgia’s quiet trap is that its two most-missed business filings share a date. By April 1, every LLC and corporation owes the Secretary of State its annual registration — $60 for profit entities, filed any time from January 1 — and every business with equipment, furniture, computers, or inventory owes its county a PT-50P business personal property return. Miss the registration and a $25 late penalty applies immediately, with administrative dissolution waiting for entities that let it slide; dissolution is the kind of status problem that surfaces at a loan closing or an acquisition, never at a convenient moment. (You can prepay the registration up to three years ahead — a genuinely useful feature almost nobody uses.)

The personal-property side improved dramatically in 2025: Georgia voters ratified Referendum A, raising the statewide exemption on business personal property from $7,500 to $20,000 of fair market value, effective January 1, 2025. For many small businesses that zeroes out the tax on their equipment. What it did not change is the return itself or the county assessor’s posture — county boards of assessors cannot grant extensions or waive penalties, so the April 1 date is as hard as deadlines get. The return is generated straight from your asset schedule, and an asset schedule still carrying equipment you sold or scrapped years ago inflates your appraised value — the most common self-inflicted property tax we see. Maintaining that schedule, correctly depreciated, is standard in every Maxim Liberty engagement.

Sales Tax: 4% Plus Wherever You Sit

The state rate is 4%, and counties and cities stack their own levies on top, so the combined rate depends on where the sale happens — Atlanta sits at 8.9%, and other counties land at their own figures on DOR’s quarterly rate charts. Returns are due the 20th of the month following the reporting period. The failure mode is the same everywhere: collected tax quietly commingled with operating cash and spent before the 20th arrives. We book sales tax to its own liability account from the first transaction and reconcile it monthly, so remittance day is a transfer, not a scramble — and multi-location sellers get the county-by-county detail tracked properly.

Hiring in Georgia: The Payroll Side

Georgia employers answer to the Department of Labor for unemployment insurance: new employers pay a flat 2.70% for 2026 on a $9,500 wage base, with experienced rates running 0.04% to 8.1% — your actual rate arrives on the annual DOL-626 notice, which is why the books should never hard-code a prior year’s figure. State income-tax withholding runs at the flat 4.99%, with the mid-2026 rate change noted above baked into this year’s records. One more 2026 nuance your payroll ledger should reflect: Georgia did not adopt the new federal exemptions for overtime and tip income, but it does allow up to $1,750 of each to be excluded from Georgia taxable income — a state-federal difference that only surfaces correctly when payroll categories are kept clean all year. Employers covering childcare costs can also point their CPA at Georgia’s new employer childcare credit of $500 per child ($1,000 the first year).

Georgia Cities We Serve

Dedicated local guide: Atlanta — plus Savannah, Augusta, Columbus, Macon, Athens, Alpharetta, Marietta, and every corner of the state, all served remotely. Browse all locations.

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