Deadlines & Рrocess

Dubai Design District (d3) is a specialist cluster for design, fashion, architecture and the creative industries, launched in 2013 and part of the portfolio of TECOM Group PJSC, a public company listed on the Dubai Financial Market. Licensing, visas and zoning are administered by the Dubai Development Authority (DDA) — the same regulator that oversees Dubai Internet City, Dubai Media City and the other TECOM clusters.

Hong Kong's employment and talent visas are administered by the Immigration Department across several parallel schemes. The ones that matter to foreign nationals are the General Employment Policy (GEP) for employed professionals and for entrepreneurs, the Top Talent Pass Scheme (TTPS) for high earners and graduates of listed universities, and the Quality Migrant Admission Scheme (QMAS) for those without a job offer. All of them lead to the same destination: after seven years of continuous ordinary residence, the entrant and their dependants may apply for permanent resident status.

Stamp duty on the transfer of Hong Kong stock is charged at an aggregate of 0.2% — 0.1% on each of the two contract notes — plus a fixed HKD 5 on the instrument of transfer. The charge is computed on the consideration or the value of the stock, whichever is higher. The governing statute is the Stamp Duty Ordinance (Cap. 117), Head 2 of the First Schedule, administered by the Stamp Office of the Inland Revenue Department.

Closing a UAE company is not one procedure but three running in parallel: the corporate track (liquidation and licence cancellation), the tax track (deregistration with the Federal Tax Authority for corporate tax and VAT) and the immigration track (cancelling visas and the establishment card). The framework is set by Federal Decree-Law No. 32 of 2021 on Commercial Companies as amended by Federal Decree-Law No. 20 of 2025, Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 on Corporate Tax, Federal Decree-Law No. 8 of 2017 on VAT and Federal Decree-Law No. 28 of 2022 on Tax Procedures.

A Hong Kong company carries two parallel, procedurally unconnected annual obligations: filing an Annual Return (Form NAR1) with the Companies Registry, and filing a Profits Tax Return (Form BIR51) with attached audited financial statements with the Inland Revenue Department (IRD).

A foreign company falls within UAE corporate tax on three independent grounds, set out in Article 11(4) of Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022: having a permanent establishment in the UAE, deriving State Sourced Income, or having a nexus in the UAE as determined by Cabinet decision. None of these requires incorporating in the UAE, and none depends on the company's own choice — they arise from facts.

UPPERSETUP’s Analytical Perspective on the Transformation of the Business Environment in the UAE