Moving to the United Arab Emirates: residence, tax and your company

Two separate questions get collapsed into one whenever people write about moving to the United Arab Emirates. The first is whether you are allowed to be there, which is immigration. The second is whether the tax authority counts you as resident, which is tax. They are decided by different bodies on different tests, and having the first does not give you the second.

This page keeps them apart, and states the facts that are specific to United Arab Emirates rather than the ones that are true everywhere.

The facts specific to United Arab Emirates

Getting the residence

The route most founders use is residence through a free zone company, employment, property, or one of the long-term golden and green visa categories. Timeline: weeks. Cost: mid five figures in the first year once licence, establishment card, visa and medical are counted.

Keeping it is a separate condition from getting it. Here: an ordinary residence visa lapses after six months outside the country. Golden visa holders are not subject to that rule. That number is the one to plan travel around, and it is frequently different from the number that decides your tax position.

When you become tax resident

The domestic test is this: 183 days in a twelve-month period; or 90 days for UAE and GCC nationals and residence-permit holders who also have a permanent place of residence or carry on employment or business in the UAE; or having the UAE as the usual and primary place of residence and the centre of financial and personal interests.

What being resident here costs

There is no personal income tax. Corporate tax at 9% has applied to businesses since June 2023, and the free-zone 0% is a conditional status rather than an address.

There is no personal income tax to plan around, which removes the largest variable in this comparison. What remains is the corporate position, the cost of the residence itself, and whether you can evidence it to the country you left.

What happens to your company

There is no clearly settled published position on how the United Arab Emirates classifies a US LLC. That is the honest answer for most of the world, and it means the question has to be resolved with a local adviser on your facts rather than assumed from how the IRS treats it.

There are no controlled-foreign-company rules applying to resident individuals here, which removes one of the three doctrines that usually catch founders. The other two still apply: your company can become tax resident where it is managed from, and it can create a taxable presence through what you do there. The distinction between them is worth being precise about.

The treaty position

The IRS in-force treaty table does not list a treaty with the United Arab Emirates. There is therefore no treaty tie-breaker available if the United States and United Arab Emirates both claim you, and no reduced withholding on US-source payments. For a founder with US income or a US entity, that is a material fact and it is routinely assumed away.

Banking

Good, and the strongest in this set for a working business — but it requires a licence, an office, a resident signatory and an in-person meeting. Balance requirements have risen.

Whatever you open locally, the account-opening form will ask which countries you are tax resident in and will report accordingly — see what your bank reports. The general picture across jurisdictions is here.

Where the route ends

Citizenship: effectively closed. Naturalisation is exceptional and discretionary. Dual nationality is not permitted, which for most readers makes the citizenship route academic rather than real.

The years only count if the permit you hold is a reckonable one and you are actually present for the required part of it — the two clocks run separately, and only one of them appears in most marketing.

What goes wrong in United Arab Emirates

The order to do this in

1. 1Settle the exit first. What it takes to stop being resident where you are now, and whether leaving triggers an exit charge. This is the half that decides the bill.
2. 2Resolve the company question before you land, not in your first filing season — classification, management and any local registration obligation.
3. 3Get the permit, and diarise the presence condition that keeps it alive.
4. 4Register with the tax authority and meet the domestic residence test deliberately rather than incidentally.
5. 5Request the certificate of tax residence for the first full year, and every year after. It is the document every other party in this story will ask you for.
6. 6Record presence contemporaneously — entry and exit dates, per country. Both the permit and the tax position depend on it, and neither can be reconstructed convincingly from memory.