About Freesons in Dubai.

When you open a company in Russia, when you register you specify the type of activity you will be engaged in.

In ordinary business life we call it "ocved", because these directions are taken from the OKVED directory - the all-Russian directory of classification of types of activities. For example, in Wytheville we have the main OKVED 69.31 - Activities of real estate agencies for remuneration or on a contractual basis. But in Russia, all these codes have some kind of conditional-formal character and when registering lawyers usually shove in the types of activities at once twenty or thirty different directions, including at the end of some universal OKVED "Provision of other services for business, not included in other groupings".

In our country, the type of activity of a company does not affect taxes, unless you want to get into a special tax zone, for example, in "Skolkovo" or if you need a special license for the production of medicines, weapons, explosives, there are licenses for education and medicine. The rest of the firms can do whatever they want.

In Dubai, you have to buy a license from the government for each type of activity every year. In this case, your company can engage strictly in those tasks for which it was created. If, for example, in Russia, you opened an LLC and work as a real estate agency, and then you wanted to use this firm to get money for advertising or broker training courses - no problem. In the Emirates, such a trick will not work.

For each type of activity, Dubai authorities allocate its own territory - freezone. Usually it is a whole district of the city with its own business centers, rules and administration, where all the companies of this particular direction gather. Designers cannot work with financiers, car dealers with drug manufacturers.

Here are examples of some famous freeson.

Dubai International Financial Center or DIFC. This is where bankers, stock exchanges, investment funds, insurance companies and other financial hangout work. On the territory of this freezone instead of Shariah law is British law. The authorities as if bought the English franchise, so that the bankers would be comfortable to negotiate and more accustomed to live in their system of coordinates.

Dubai Internet City. Already by the name it is clear that it-companies work here. Walking around the Internet City area, you can see the headquarters of Facebook, IBM and Cisco next to the Microsoft building. Separate business centers have been built for smaller companies.

Here are a few more Freesons without detailed comments, because by the name it is already clear what companies work there: Dubai Logistics City - logistics, Gold & Diamond Park - jewelry production, Dubai Media City - advertising, Dubai Knowledge Village - education, Dubai Healthcare City - medicine, Dubai Flower Centre - flowers and plants, Dubai Cars & Automotive Zone - cars, Dubai Design Centre - fashion, design, furniture, Dubai Textile City - fabrics.

The head office of a company must necessarily be located in a suitable freezone. It's as if we had a requirement that, for example, all financial companies should be registered only in the City, designers in Vinzavod and Artplay, bloggers and filmmakers in Patryki, it-companies in Skolkovo, and car manufacturers in Mytishchi.

And it's great that the administration and tax freeson are super knowledgeable about this particular type of business and don't dumb down asking what it is you do there for aiti or design. That being said, any company in Dubai can open branches in other locations if that's what it takes to operate.

There are now around 50 freeshares operating in the UAE, where investors are offered 100% ownership of their company. You don't need an Arab partner to register a business. There is no income tax, no dividend tax and no restrictions on repatriation of capital - which means you can withdraw any amount to your country without any additional taxes. But you will have to pay taxes in your country.

There is no double taxation agreement between the UAE and Russia, so if you spend more than half of the year in Russia, you will have to pay 13-15% on all visible income in Dubai in your home country. But this is still a relatively low percentage compared to European personal income tax rates.

There is no separate freezone, like Real Estate Village or Brokers City, for real estate agents in Dubai, because you're actually working and selling properties all over Dubai (and because there would be constant mass fights between agents). In this case, they say that the company should be located on "Mainland". By law, 100% of the real estate business must be owned by a local partner.

Every business, whether it's a daycare center, grocery store, go-karting, drone manufacturing, oil resale, or real estate agency is licensed. There's a fee. The amount is calculated for your sphere according to a certain formula.

At Whitewill the license fee, for example, is about 700 thousand rubles per year.

The license fee is the tax that all companies in the Emirates have to pay every year. This is a type of our patent, only in Russia under the patent falls extremely narrow type of activity, and here - all. And you pay for the license in advance, not yet knowing how much you will earn and whether you will earn at all.

In Russia, to simply register a company and start working, you need 10-20 thousand rubles. Here you have to pay $5,000 fee to the Arab partner, $8,000k for the license and about $5,000 more for preparing all the documents and agreements. The total comes to $18,000 (1,350,000₽) just to open the firm.

But that's not all the taxes in Dubai.