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The advisory desk

Insights

Working notes from the people who file the applications — what the rules actually say, what they cost, and where founders lose time. Written against the authorities, not against a brochure.

The archive

Latest intelligence

173 pieces
  1. Licensing & approvals Man in a kandura, woman in an abaya and a man in a suit each point at one licence

    Your trade licence is one page, and every party who reads it afterwards reads a different line

    Formation is written about as though the licence were the finish line. 12 min read
  2. Costs & capital Woman in a hijab reads a sheet at a desk lined with three building models and a gavel

    Choosing where to incorporate in Dubai is choosing a registrar, and the registrar settles more than the price

    The mainland, free zone and offshore choice every setup guide opens with is a map of ownership and market access. 12 min read
  3. Free zones Woman looks up from an open notebook sketched with a light bulb and buildings, keys and papers beside her

    Nothing inside a free zone is an opportunity. The zone sells permission; the idea has to arrive from outside the fence.

    People search for business opportunities in free zones the way they would search for a shop to buy, and the zones answer in a vocabulary built for someone who has already chosen. 15 min read
  4. General Woman holds up two printed tables of figures as a man leans in to read, small desk flags beside them

    Nobody pays the rate in the table, at either end of the comparison

    A ranked list of corporate tax rates is the oldest instrument in the business-setup pitch and the least reliable. 13 min read
  5. Tax & accounting Woman points a pen along a row of lit building models with coin stacks and a percent plaque between them

    Dubai levies no annual tax on property, and charges you at almost every point the property moves

    The one sentence every article about Dubai real estate is built on — no property tax — is true and answers a narrower question than it appears to. 13 min read
  6. Tax & accounting Man reads a sheet above four paper stacks topped by a flag, a key, a certificate and a tower model

    ‘No capital gains tax’ is not a relief, and it says almost nothing about selling your company

    The UAE government's own taxation page names three taxes and a capital gains tax is not among them. That is where the sentence on every setup page comes from, and it is where its usefulness ends. 16 min read
  7. Virtual assets Woman reads a sealed sheet beside stacked boxes, an electricity meter, a lit UAE map and a bitcoin coin

    Mining is licensed as industry, powered as industry and taxed as a business. The cryptocurrency part is the least regulated thing about it.

    Proof-of-work mining for your own account is one of the few things you can do with a digital asset in the UAE without a virtual asset regulator's permission. 13 min read
  8. Licensing & approvals Woman in a black hijab lifting a page from a navy binder beside a maroon one at a marble counter

    Your licence made a company. Hiring the first person opens a second file, held by a different ministry.

    Every Dubai setup page sells the labour market — skilled people from everywhere, already here, ready to join. All of that is true, and none of it is permission. 18 min read
  9. General Woman at a counter reads a sheet of anonymous figures beside a padlocked drawer standing open

    Dubai publishes your competitors and nobody publishes your customers

    Every setup guide tells you to research the market before you commit, and not one of them says where the answers live. In the UAE they live in three different places with three different prices. 16 min read
  10. Mainland Woman in an abaya studies an illuminated scale model of Dubai, city skyline beyond the glass

    Deciding on Dubai has not decided anything yet. The emirate contains four separate systems and your licence puts you inside exactly one of them.

    The case for Dubai is made at the level of the emirate — position, connectivity, institutions, the fact that most of what a founder needs is within an hour of everything else. 13 min read
  11. Healthcare A woman reads a crested document while a stethoscope rests on ring binders and a man in a kandura watches

    Dubai Decides What Counts as a Health Activity. Your Website Copy Does Not.

    Health and wellness is on every list of Dubai's open sectors, and the lists never mention that one sentence of Executive Council Resolution No. 17 min read
  12. General Man gesturing toward a stack of padlocked boxes marked with icons while a colleague listens

    The formation was the one-off. What your provider keeps holding afterwards renews every year, and one part of it cannot be taken back without them.

    A UAE company formation is sold as a transaction and settles as a relationship. 11 min read
  13. General Man points a pen at a clipboard checklist of icons and figures while a woman listens

    Half the suppliers a setup firm offers to introduce you to were chosen by somebody else before you arrived

    Every UAE business setup firm sells its network — banks, auditors, translators, insurers, offices, payment providers. 16 min read
  14. General Woman at a marble desk studies a sealed certificate beside three desk clocks and a scales-of-justice figurine

    When a shareholder dies the UAE company keeps existing, and stops being able to act

    A UAE company is a separate legal person, so it survives its owner. 19 min read
  15. Advisory Woman reads an icon-ruled sheet beside five labelled document stacks, brass scales and a gold city model

    Every benefit the UAE advertises is real, and every one of them is conditional

    Five sentences carry almost every UAE business-setup page in this market: full foreign ownership, no personal income tax, residency with the licence, unrestricted repatriation, and the location. 18 min read
  16. Licensing & approvals Woman holds a certificate above coins beside lit blocks marked fingerprint, stethoscope, identity card and aeroplane

    A low-cost UAE licence is priced for year one, and you own the cost in year two

    A headline licence price covers the licence and twelve months of premises. 22 min read
  17. Startups & expansion Adviser presents three scale models across a desk: a tower, a villa and a bare plot

    A foreign buyer in Dubai owns one of three different things, and the paperwork rarely says which

    Dubai law closes property ownership to non-nationals and then opens three exceptions to it: freehold without time limit, or a usufruct or lease of up to ninety-nine years, in areas the Ruler has designated. 19 min read
  18. General Woman behind a balance scale weighing a percentage figure against a model villa, a passport and a flag

    Nine per cent in the UAE does not settle what you owe where you live

    The rate is the least interesting number in the decision. A ranked table of headline corporate tax rates is the most reproduced and least useful artefact in this market. 19 min read
  19. Costs & capital A woman weighs a domed building model banked with cash against an office block marked with a question

    The share capital figure is a promise, not a payment

    There is no UAE-wide minimum capital for a free zone company. 13 min read
  20. Real estate A woman holds one sheet behind a long row of ring binders, a model house and keys nearby

    There is no ‘real estate licence’ in Dubai — there are twenty-one, and they are not tiers of one thing

    The Dubai Land Department's own licensing service lists twenty-one separate real estate activities, from land surveying to development. 17 min read
  21. General A man in a kandura studies a phone sealed under a glass dome, its screen showing a fingerprint

    The portal logins are the company, and most founders never hold them

    A UAE company is controlled through about seven online accounts. 20 min read
  22. General Woman in hijab reads a single page beside a tabbed file stack and three brass stamps on stone tiers

    Choosing a sector is choosing which second authority has to approve you

    For a large part of the activity directory, the economic department or the free zone authority is not the body that decides. 30 min read
  23. General Woman in abaya sets a wooden building block into a row of models beside a chained padlock

    The structures that quietly make a UAE company impossible to invest in

    A legal form is chosen against two numbers, and judged against a different set entirely. 36 min read
  24. Free zones Woman in an abaya watches a hand stamp a report marked with a red cross, lit Gulf map below

    Saudi Arabia does not recognise a free zone invoice, and that is the market your Dubai licence was sold to reach

    Every free zone brochure sells proximity: a bridge between Europe, Asia and Africa, a regional base, three continents inside a short flight. Proximity is real and it is not what a customs officer measures. 15 min read
  25. Costs & capital Woman in an abaya reaches over a glowing gold UAE map with routes running to a bank, ship and aircraft

    ‘Full repatriation of profits’ is true, and it is not what decides whether your money moves

    The UAE charges nothing on a dividend leaving the country and applies no exchange controls. Both true, and neither is the constraint. 20 min read

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