Most UAE businesses no longer have anything to file under the Economic Substance Regulations. Cabinet Decision No. 98 of 2024 limited ESR to financial years from 1 January 2019 ending on or before 31 December 2022, and there is no notification or report obligation for any financial year after 2022. If your financial year ends… Continue reading Economic Substance Regulations UAE: Where ESR Stands

UBO reporting is still fully in force in the UAE. It is governed by Cabinet Decision No. 109 of 2023, which repealed Cabinet Decision No. 58 of 2020, and it requires you to maintain a register of beneficial owners, a register of partners or shareholders, disclose any nominee arrangements, and file with the Registrar. The… Continue reading UBO Reporting in the UAE: What You Must File

Choose on the basis of who pays you. If your customers are UAE businesses, government bodies or consumers you invoice locally, you need a mainland licence. If your customers are overseas, or inside free zones, a free zone licence is usually cheaper and simpler and does the same job. Almost everything else written about this… Continue reading Mainland or Free Zone in the UAE: How to Choose

Your visa quota is tied to the space you take, not the company you form. A flexi-desk supports a small number of visas; a private office supports more; warehouse and industrial space is assessed on area. That is the mechanism in free zones and, in a different form, on the mainland too — where quota… Continue reading UAE Visa Quota: How Many Visas You Get

Your licensed activity is the most consequential choice on the application form and the one people spend least time on. It determines what you can legally invoice for, which bank will open your account, which visas you can sponsor, and whether some approvals apply at all. If none of your activities need a UAE presence… Continue reading Choosing Business Activities in the UAE

End-of-service gratuity is a statutory payment an employer owes an employee when their employment ends, and it accrues with each period of continuous service. It is calculated on basic salary alone — not on the total package — so housing, transport and every other allowance in the pay structure sit outside the figure the calculation… Continue reading End-of-Service Gratuity in the UAE

The UAE does not generally offer a dormancy regime the way some jurisdictions do: there is no filing that suspends your company, freezes its obligations and lets you restart later. A UAE company is either licensed — with renewal, premises, visa and compliance obligations continuing whether or not it trades — or properly closed. That… Continue reading Dormant Company UAE: Can You Pause a Licence?

Moving a company from one UAE free zone to another is almost never a transfer in the sense the word implies. In most cases there is no mechanism to lift an existing entity out of one zone’s register and set it down in another’s, so the practical route is to form a new company in… Continue reading Transfer a Company Between UAE Free Zones

A UAE company carries a fixed set of recurring obligations: trade licence renewal, premises tenancy where it supports that licence, the immigration establishment card, employee visas and insurance, bookkeeping and financial statements, audit where your authority requires it, and tax and VAT filings where they apply. None of them falls on a national date. Each… Continue reading Annual Compliance for a UAE Company: What Recurs