Business Setup & Incorporation
Mainland vs free zone, the right licence and activity, visa allocation, banking — and incorporation packages that don't include things you'll never use.
Our move
We left because the sums stopped adding up.
I'm David, and this is my partner, Gem. In November 2025 we left Norfolk for Dubai and worked the whole thing out between us — no relocation package, no company handling the paperwork.
We'd had enough of feeling that everything we built was being chipped away. Taxed when you earn it, taxed when you spend it, taxed on where you live, taxed on the roads you drive on — and now they're coming for the ISAs, the savings and the investments you already paid tax on once. I've never argued against paying tax. I pay plenty of it. But you should get to tax me on it once.
The other half of it was what we felt we got back. Policing that never seemed to arrive, and theft and violence that felt like it had become normal and gone unpunished. If the money went where it was needed and the law was respected, we'd have had far less of a problem with the bill.
So we ran the numbers. Dubai charges no personal income tax — but honestly, even if it became a 5% or 10% country tomorrow, it would still work out cheaper for us than staying.
What it actually cost us was rent, company incorporation, the visas, and the recurring fees that keep arriving long after the setup invoice is paid. And here's the honest part: if I were doing it again, I wouldn't go down the route I took. That one decision cost us time and money we didn't need to spend.
To be straight about what the move did and didn't change: we still run UK businesses and we're still UK landlords. We still pay UK tax on those businesses and on our property income, and moving hasn't altered that one bit. This was never about walking away from what we owe. It was about building a new life, new businesses and new online income while living in the UAE.
“I've never argued against paying tax. I just think you should get to tax me on it once.”
That's the thinking behind everything on this page. When you talk to me you're not getting an agent working from a script — you're getting someone who has run the same numbers with his own money. If I can save you the time, the pitfalls and the mistakes I made, that's my job done.