UAE business rules do not trend. They change on a gazette date, and nine of those dates explain most of the wrong advice in this market.

A forecast expires on the date it names. A dated record does not.

Every year this market publishes a list of what is coming next, and every one of those lists is unusable within about eighteen months — not because the predictions were bad, but because a prediction has no way of telling a reader whether it has already happened, already been cancelled, or never applied to them.

The dated record behaves differently. Between January 2018 and late 2025 the UAE issued a run of instruments that each replaced something a founder had been told was permanent. A consumption tax. A rewritten companies law. A corporate tax with a first-ever rate on business profit. A conditional relief for free zone entities that replaced an unconditional one. A rewritten anti-money-laundering law. And an emirate-level permission that changed what a Dubai free zone company may do outside its own fence.

Each has a number, a publisher and a date. None of them is obscure. All of them are still being contradicted in writing by somebody selling a company formation this week.

An addition is marketed and an amendment is not, which is why the wrong version survives

The pattern behind every stale claim on this page is the same, and it is arithmetic rather than dishonesty.

A new obligation arrives with an announcement, a briefing circuit and a fee attached, so the whole market hears about it inside a week — there is money in knowing. A change to an existing obligation arrives as a clause in a gazette with nobody's commission attached to it. So the market learns what was added and does not learn what was qualified, and the two drift apart until a founder is being quoted against a checklist that is right about 2019 and silent about everything since.

The most expensive instance is not a repealed requirement. It is a benefit that became conditional and is still being sold as absolute.

Four obligations were also abolished across the same period, and they have their own page — four UAE obligations you are still being sold — because a removal that nobody circulates causes a different kind of error from an addition that nobody qualifies.

2018: the sentence "there are no taxes here" stopped being true, and it never fully came back

Value added tax at 5% arrived on 1 January 2018. It is a tax on supplies rather than on profit, so it did not touch the claim founders cared about — but it introduced two things that every subsequent change has built on: a federal tax authority with a record, and the idea that a UAE business has a filing obligation at all.

The thresholds are the part that still surprises people. Enrolment is mandatory once taxable supplies pass AED 375,000, and available voluntarily at AED 187,500. Both are tested on turnover, not on profit, and neither cares which jurisdiction issued your licence. A free zone company crossing the mandatory threshold enrols like anybody else.

The advice this killed: that a UAE company has nothing to file. It has had something to file since the first quarter of 2018.

2020 and 2021: ownership stopped being a reason to choose a free zone

Federal Decree-Law No. 26 of 2020 removed the majority-Emirati shareholding requirement for onshore companies and the national agent requirement for foreign branches. Dubai applied its eligible-activity list from 1 June 2021. The Commercial Companies Law was then replaced entirely by Federal Decree-Law No. 32 of 2021, in force from 2 January 2022 — which means template articles and memoranda still citing Federal Law No. 2 of 2015 are citing a repealed statute.

Almost every commentary treated this as news about the mainland. It was also, quietly, news about free zones: full foreign ownership had been the free zone's headline differentiator for two decades, and it stopped being a differentiator that year. Nobody in the zone marketing business had a reason to say so.

The advice this killed: that you need a local partner on the mainland, and — the half nobody mentions — that 100% ownership is something a free zone gives you.

June 2023: corporate tax, and the claim that has damaged more founders than any other

Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 applies to financial years beginning on or after 1 June 2023. The rate is 9% on taxable income above AED 375,000, and 0% at or below it. It reaches UAE businesses generally. There is no jurisdiction on a licence that removes a company from the law's scope.

Three consequences arrived with it and are routinely missed:

• An enrolment obligation, not just a payment one. A company below the threshold still has a filing position. Owing nothing and filing nothing are different.
• A first tax period that depends on your financial year end, which is a decision most founders make in a hurry and cannot easily reverse. Choosing your first financial year end sets out why.
• Records that must exist before there is anything to account for. The obligation runs from the first day of the first tax period, not from the first return.

The advice this killed: "zero corporate tax". It is the most repeated false claim in this market and it has been false for every financial year beginning since 1 June 2023.

2023 and 2025: free zone relief became a test you pass annually, not a status you buy once

This is the change with the largest gap between what was published and what is being sold.

A free zone entity is not exempt from corporate tax. It may qualify for a 0% rate on part of its income if it is a Qualifying Free Zone Person and that income is qualifying income — a test set by the law and worked out through Cabinet Decision No. 100 of 2023 and, more recently, Ministerial Decision No. 229 of 2025 on qualifying and excluded activities. The conditions are substantive: adequate substance in the zone, income of the right character, transfer pricing compliance, audited financial statements, and a de minimis limit on the non-qualifying part.

Two things follow. The relief is assessed for each tax period, so a company that qualifies this year and changes what it sells may not qualify next year. And a single excluded transaction can be enough to move an entity out of the regime for that period, which is why the character of your revenue is now a structural question rather than an accounting one. This page states no activity, no percentage and no de minimis figure from either instrument, because those are exactly the numbers this market quotes from memory and gets wrong.

The advice this killed: "free zone companies are tax free." They may be relieved, on conditions, on part of their income, for one year at a time.

2025: two changes that have not reached the sales material yet

Dubai now regulates what a free zone company may do inside the Emirate. Executive Council Resolution No. (11) of 2025 creates forms of authorisation for a free zone establishment conducting activity within Dubai outside its own zone — a branch licence and a permit for specified activities — and obliges the Department of Economy and Tourism to issue the activity list that governs which. This is a live change to the oldest question in UAE setup: can a free zone company sell to the local market. The answer is no longer a flat no, and it is not a yes either; it is a question about a list.

The anti-money-laundering law was re-enacted. Federal Decree-Law No. 10 of 2025 with Cabinet Resolution No. 134 of 2025 replaced the 2018 instrument. For most founders the practical effect is unchanged — the bank still runs due diligence and can still decline without giving reasons — but a designated non-financial business or profession working from the old framework is working from a repealed one.

The change everybody is quoting a date for, and why this page will not

A phased electronic invoicing programme has been announced through the Ministry of Finance. It is real, it is coming, and the dates being circulated in this market are not consistent with each other.

The rule that applies here applies to every forthcoming change: take the commencement date from the ministry that publishes it, or do not act on a date at all. A commitment made against a date somebody else guessed is the same class of error as the four repealed obligations on this page, arriving early instead of late. If a provider quotes you a phase and a deadline, ask which published document says so. Applied to a whole forecast rather than one date, that is the audit in what a Dubai trends list can and cannot tell you.

The same discipline applies to dated references generally. Expo 2020 Dubai ran from October 2021 to March 2022 and finished. Material still describing it as forthcoming is not merely out of date — it tells you the writer has not re-read the page since, and everything else on it was written at the same time.

Three tests that date any piece of UAE setup advice in about a minute

1. Ask which instrument imposes it. A live rule has a name: a Federal Decree-Law, a Cabinet Decision, a Ministerial Decision, an emirate resolution, a zone regulation. "It is a requirement" is the absence of an answer.
2. Ask what has happened to that instrument since. Every stale claim on this page fails here rather than at the first question. The original was correct when written; nobody has asked it what year it is.
3. Ask what the advice would look like if it were wrong. "Free zones are tax free" and "free zones may qualify for relief on qualifying income" produce identical behaviour in year one and completely different outcomes in year three. Prefer the version that could be falsified.

Where reading this as a reason to wait is the wrong conclusion

You are pausing a formation until the rules settle. They will not settle, and none of the changes above made setting up harder — most made it simpler or cheaper. Waiting costs a financial year and buys no information. The useful response is to choose a structure that holds up against the direction of travel, which is what our vision sets out.

You are choosing a jurisdiction on the tax position alone. The 2023 and 2025 instruments narrowed the gap between free zone and mainland considerably. Market access, premises, regulator and cost base now decide more than the rate does.

You are re-papering a company that is already correct. A 2019 memorandum citing a repealed companies law is worth fixing at the next amendment, not as an emergency. Ask what actually stops working, and if the answer is nothing, calendar it.

You already have an adviser who quoted you the current instruments unprompted. That is the rare case, and this page is not a reason to go shopping.

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