«There are no taxes in Dubai» is one of those lines that used to be entirely true and is now only half true. It’s still true for personal income. It’s stopped being true, with important nuance, for a good share of freelancers billing under their own visa with a certain volume of activity.
What’s still 0%
The United Arab Emirates doesn’t levy personal income tax. Not on salary, not on local-source income, not on foreign-source income. This hasn’t changed and there are no announced plans for it to change any time soon — it’s one of the few genuinely stable certainties in this whole landscape.
What changed in 2023 that a lot of guides still haven’t updated
Since June 2023, the UAE applies a 9% Corporate Tax on taxable profit above AED 375,000 (roughly €93,000) a year. The part most people miss: this doesn’t only apply to «companies» in the traditional sense — a freelancer operating under a trade or professional licence can fall within Corporate Tax if their annual business turnover exceeds the de-minimis threshold of AED 1 million (roughly €248,000) set for individual activities.
Below that volume, and as long as taxable profit doesn’t exceed AED 375,000, there’s also a «Small Business Relief» that lets you, by explicitly electing it on your tax return, be treated as having zero taxable income as long as your total revenue has never exceeded AED 3 million in any tax period. In practice, this leaves the average freelancer with their own visa and moderate turnover outside Corporate Tax — but «outside for now, as long as it doesn’t grow too much» is a different sentence from «zero taxes forever,» and that distinction is exactly what’s missing from a lot of content still circulating about Dubai from before 2023.
The freelance visa isn’t a tax regime
Just like Estonia’s e-residency, Dubai’s freelance visa (issued through specific free zones, with no local sponsor required) is a migration and business-licensing instrument, not a tax category in itself. It gives legal access to live and bill in the UAE. Whether your personal income is untaxed there depends on the absence of UAE personal income tax, not on the visa — and whether your activity does or doesn’t fall under the 9% corporate rate depends on your real turnover, not on the type of visa you hold.
What this means if you’re considering Dubai from Spain
Becoming a UAE tax resident doesn’t solve anything on its own if you still meet Spanish tax residency criteria (183 days, centre of economic or vital interests) — you’d still be a Spanish tax resident obligated to declare worldwide income, UAE included. And Spain, unlike most EU countries, doesn’t have a double-taxation treaty with the UAE for individuals on the same terms as with other countries — which makes resolving a potential residency conflict harder than usual, and is exactly the kind of detail worth sorting out with a specialist before organising the move, not after.
In the comments: if you bill from Dubai on a freelance visa and your activity is already approaching the AED 1 million mark, share how you handle Corporate Tax and whether you’ve applied for Small Business Relief. It’s the grey area with the most real questions right now.
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Sources: UAE Corporate Tax regulations in force since June 2023, tax guides updated for 2026 (Ancova Associates, UAE Expert Hub, Country Tax Calc). This isn’t tax advice — the relationship between your Spanish tax residency and a UAE activity should be reviewed by a specialist in both jurisdictions.