UAE: the Golden Visa with no presence requirement proves popular

Ordinary Emirati residence visas require holders not to be absent from the country beyond a continuous period, failing which they are cancelled.

The long-term permit granted on the basis of an investment or a qualification is free of this constraint: its holder may live elsewhere without losing their right of residence.

Buying a property worth at least from AED 2,000,000¹, or around about €520,000², gives access to a renewable 10 years³ permit, with family sponsorship.

This flexibility accounts for much of its appeal: it makes it possible to hold a fallback option without uprooting one's life, which very few residence permits allow.

It also explains how some holders actually use it: they never intended to settle there and use it as a form of insurance.

This feature clearly sets the Emirati permit apart from European schemes. Andorran passive residence (without gainful activity) requires actual annual presence, and European residence permits generally require genuine residence, failing which they are not renewed.

A permit that requires no presence cannot, by design, establish tax residency. The Emirates require presence of from 183 days⁴ over twelve months to establish an individual's tax residency.

The certificate of tax residency is also a separate procedure from the permit, and it is essential for invoking the tax treaty concluded with France.

Without it, a ten-year permit holder who lives elsewhere is, from a treaty standpoint, in the same position as a tourist.

As long as the household or the centre of economic interests remains in France, Article 4 B of the French General Tax Code (code général des impôts) continues to apply, and the Emirati permit changes nothing in that respect.

It is therefore important to be clear about what one is buying: a right to enter and stay, possibly a fallback option, but not a tax status.

Keeping the permit requires keeping the property. Selling it has consequences for the right of residence, which reduces the effective liquidity of the segment concerned.

Freehold ownership is open to foreigners only in the emirate's designated areas. Outside these areas, acquisition takes other forms, which do not confer the same right.

The Dubai market is largely new-build, sold off-plan by a small number of developers, with staggered payment plans. It has gone through two severe corrections in twenty years.

Finally, the tax framework for holding property has changed. Individuals are not taxed — 0%⁵ — but holding through a company falls under corporate tax, at 9%⁶ above AED 375,000⁷.

We do not publish the detailed conditions of the permits granted to talent and to capital investors, or the list of areas open to foreign ownership: they derive from administrative decisions whose current version we have not been able to verify.

• The absence of a presence requirement is the permit's main attraction, and its main tax limitation.
• A 10 years³ permit is not a certificate of tax residency.
• Keeping the permit requires keeping the property, which weighs on liquidity.
• Foreign freehold ownership exists only in designated areas.
• The holding structure is no longer neutral since the introduction of corporate tax.

For a French national, the reasoning is therefore twofold. If the plan is to genuinely settle there, the permit is a means to an end and the central question becomes the certificate of tax residency. If the plan is to hold an option without moving, the permit has an insurance value — and it must then be compared, in cost and liquidity, with what insurance is really worth.