What you actually keep in the UAE
| Company revenue | UK resident | UAE resident |
|---|---|---|
| £60,000 | £46,831 | £50,069+£3,238 |
| £100,000 | £66,668 | £79,746+£13,078 |
| £150,000 | £87,303 | £116,496+£29,193 |
| £250,000 | £130,448 | £189,996+£59,548 |
Every figure above is a separate call to the same engine the calculator uses, run at build time on 2026-08-12. The green column is the best available outcome at that income.
The United Arab Emirates options, priced
- UAE resident. No personal income tax on salary, dividends or gains. Corporate tax applies to businesses, not to a natural person's investment income.
The uae has one regime to model here, which makes the structure and the residency date the only levers that matter.
What actually moves the number
- There is no personal income tax to model, so the entire outcome is decided by whether you have genuinely left the UK.
- The UK company still pays UK corporation tax. Moving yourself does not move the company.
- The UK and the UAE have a double taxation agreement, and the UK does not withhold tax on outbound dividends.
When United Arab Emirates starts taxing you
The UAE side is straightforward. The hard part is the UK side: the Statutory Residence Test, and in particular the ties test and the split-year rules, is what decides whether HMRC agrees you have gone.
The other half is the UK side. Leaving the UK tax net is the Statutory Residence Test, and running a UK company from outside the UK raises Central Management and Control and Permanent Establishment questions that are separate from your own residence. Running a UK limited company while living abroad covers both.
What this calculation assumes
- The company is assumed to distribute everything it can in the same year, after a director salary at the UK National Insurance threshold. Leaving profit in the company, or paying into a pension from it, changes the answer and is usually worth modelling.
- Corporation tax is charged at UK rates throughout, because a company incorporated in the UK stays UK tax resident wherever its director lives.
- Cross-border scenario detected. Check the applicable double-tax treaty between United Kingdom and United Arab Emirates.
- Source-country (United Kingdom) dividend withholding tax of 0% applied on the gross dividend; a foreign tax credit is granted in United Arab Emirates up to the residence-country liability (relief under the applicable double-tax treaty).
- 0% personal income tax on salary/dividends/gains. Natural persons taxed only on business turnover above AED 1m.
The last items are the engine's own disclosures, reproduced rather than summarised. Where a regime is not modelled it is named as not modelled, because a caveat you have to go looking for is not a caveat.