Move Your Business to Dubai- Transfer Branch or Redomiciliation

Move your business to Dubai the right way for the company you already have.

You run a trading entity with live contracts, a bank account that carries history, and possibly IP sitting inside the company. One wrong route can hand you a tax bill, break a bank relationship, or strand that IP. Consultycs maps the route and the sequence before you file anything.

Relocating an Established Company to Dubai

Yes, though not by shipping the same entity across a border. You have three routes: open a new UAE company and wind the old one down, register a UAE branch of your existing company, or redomicile into a free zone that accepts company continuation, such as ADGM, DIFC or RAK ICC.

All figures in this article are approximate and were accurate at the time of writing. Government fees, service charges, advisory fees, document preparation, attestation and translation costs are quoted separately and vary by case.

Redomiciliation, also called continuation, keeps your company as the same legal person and simply changes where it is registered. That option now exists in the UAE and did not always. Which route is right for you depends on what your company actually holds: dormant and contract-light entities are often faster to rebuild fresh, while a company with signed contracts, a banking track record or IP inside it usually has more to protect. The rest of this page walks the decision, then prices it from both sides, the leaving and the arriving.

Why every source tells you something different

Search this question and you get two contradictory answers, because the sources answer from different corners. Google’s own AI Overview still tells UK searchers you cannot move a company at all and must set up a new one. UAE law firms tell you to redomicile. Neither is the whole picture, and the gap between them is where founders lose money.

The plain reason is timing. Historically the UAE had limited routes to receive a foreign company as a continuation, so “open a new one” was sound advice. That changed. The 2025 amendments to the Commercial Companies Law, Federal Decree-Law No. 32 of 2021, introduced new redomiciliation routes, including intra-UAE moves between mainland and free zone. Law firms such as Gowling WLG note that the implementing procedures remain to be clarified in practice, so the direction is set even where the fine detail is still settling.

So the honest position sits between the two camps. You can keep your company and move it, or you can retire it and start clean, and the right call is a structuring decision rather than a fixed rule. If you are planning your move to Dubai as a whole, the company decision is one piece of that larger picture, and it pays to see how the parts fit before you commit to any single step.

Is this page for you

This page is for you if you already own a trading company somewhere else and want to bring it, or its activity, into the UAE. A UK Ltd, a Cyprus or BVI holding company, an EU operating entity with revenue, staff or contracts. You have something to preserve, and preserving it is the entire point.

It is not for a first-time founder with no existing entity. If you are starting from nothing, a fresh UAE company formation is a simpler path and none of the continuation mechanics below apply to you. The decision that follows only matters when there is an existing company on the table with contracts, a bank relationship or IP attached to it.

The three routes compared – new setup, branch, or redomiciliation

You have three real routes into the UAE, and they are not interchangeable. A fresh setup gives you a clean UAE company and closes the old one. A branch extends your existing company into the UAE without moving it. Redomiciliation moves the whole company and keeps its legal identity intact. Each keeps and kills different things.

The route decision is where the money is saved or lost, so the smart move is to get the company structure right before you file anything with any registry. Two points sit under the surface of this table. The branch route often raises the question of how permanent establishment risk is assessed in the UAE, which turns on where the company is really managed rather than where it is registered. And redomiciliation looks clean on paper yet carries the exit-tax trigger that the next sections deal with directly.

What transfers to the UAE, and what doesn’t

Redomiciliation preserves the company as a legal person, so in law your contracts, licences, registration number and history stay with the same entity. In practice, some of those survive the move cleanly and some have to be re-papered even though the company itself never changed. The distinction below is the one buyers are rarely told.

The banking line is the one that surprises people most. You are often sold the idea that your bank account survives a redomiciliation. The truer statement is that your company survives; the bank relationship may still be re-papered from scratch. Plan for that gap early, because opening a corporate bank account once the entity is in place is a distinct step with its own timeline, and treating it as automatic is how founders end up trading with no live account for weeks.

Which UAE free zones accept a company redomiciliation

Several UAE free zones publish continuation procedures and will receive a foreign company as the same legal entity. The choice between them is not about prestige; it is about your activity, your licensing needs and whether you need a common-law or civil-law framework. The table below sets out the practical fit.

Consultycs works with no default jurisdiction. The zone is assigned by your business model and industry, not by whichever one is easiest to sell. That is a deliberate policy, because the substance requirements, the ESR position and the QFZP corporate-tax outcome all shift depending on where the company lands. Pick the zone to fit the company, not the company to fit the zone.

What it costs to leave – the exit tax your home country charges

The most expensive surprise in a company move is not what the UAE charges to receive you. It is what your home country charges to let you go. On the UK side, when a company ceases to be UK tax resident, HMRC treats it as having disposed of its chargeable assets at market value on the exit day. That is the exit charge, and it can create a taxable gain out of nothing you actually sold.

The statutory basis is TCGA 1992 section 185, with parallel rules for loan relationships, derivatives and intangible fixed assets under the Corporation Tax Act 2009. HMRC’s own Capital Gains Manual sets out the deemed-disposal position at CG13430. An emigrating company must notify HMRC and settle arrangements for any outstanding tax before it goes. The amount is entirely specific to your company, because it turns on the market value of what the company holds, so no honest page can quote you a figure.

Residence is not only about where you are registered. Under the central management and control test, running from De Beers Consolidated Mines v Howe and refined in Development Securities v HMRC, a company is UK resident where it is actually managed and controlled. Move the registration but keep the real decision-making in the UK, and HMRC can still treat the company as UK resident, which defeats the point and can leave you taxed in both places. So if you’re moving from the UK specifically, treat the exit charge and the residence test as the two things to model before any UAE filing, and put them in front of a UK adviser working alongside your UAE structuring.

Other origin countries run their own exit regimes. Cyprus, for example, brings creditor-notice periods that stretch the timeline rather than the tax bill. The mechanics differ by country, so the rule is simple: price the departure before you admire the arrival, and take origin-country advice specific to where your company sits today.

What a UAE redomiciliation costs, and how long it takes

There is no single price for a company move, and any page that gives you one is guessing. What you can know is the structure of the cost, which is what lets you budget honestly. The move is built from the components below, and the total moves with your receiving jurisdiction and the complexity of your entity.

What the cost is built from

• The receiving authority’s registration and licence fees, set by the free zone you continue into (AED-denominated, and higher for regulated activity).
• Document attestation, legalisation and Arabic translation of your certificate of good standing, articles and shareholder approvals.
• Advisory fees for mapping the route, sequencing the filings and handling the continuation.
• Route-dependent office and substance cost, where the zone or your activity requires a real presence.
• Possible origin-side transfer fees or the exit charge, which sit in your home country and can dwarf everything on the UAE side.

What makes the number move is worth stating plainly: the receiving jurisdiction, the complexity of your entity, whether your activities are regulated, and the condition of your documents. A clean holding company continuing into RAK ICC sits at one end; a regulated operating entity continuing into ADGM or DIFC sits at the other. Government fees on the UAE side run from four figures into five figures in AED, and the advisory and origin-side elements are quoted separately.

How long it takes

Plan for roughly six to eight weeks from the point your documents are fully notarised and attested, per guidance from firms including Pinsent Masons. End to end, eight to fourteen weeks is common once you count document preparation and UAE-side approvals. Where your home jurisdiction imposes creditor-notice or tax-clearance windows, the timeline can stretch to several months. The sequence has dependencies: documents must be attested before the receiving authority grants initial approval, and the strike-off at home only happens once the UAE continuation is confirmed.

How Consultycs handles a company move from start to finish

A founder who picks the wrong route, or files in the wrong sequence, can trigger an avoidable exit charge, break a bank relationship, or strand IP outside the entity. The complexity is not the paperwork. It is deciding which of the three routes actually fits your company and then running the filings in an order that does not backfire, across two jurisdictions at once.

Consultycs does not sell packages. The structure comes first, designed around your business model and your financial position, and the licence follows the structure rather than the other way round. That matters most when a structure is already broken. Consultycs has a track record of corrective structuring, including rebuilding a tax-inefficient oil-trading structure that had been set up wrong the first time, so a half-finished or mis-filed move is familiar ground rather than a fresh problem.

Tax efficiency is the design goal, built from your projections rather than bolted on afterwards, and the work runs end to end: licensing, visas, banking, accounting and ongoing compliance under one roof. You are not handed off between a setup agent and a tax adviser who never speak. If you want the route and the sequence mapped before anything is filed, that is the work.

Where founders get the company move wrong

The mistakes in a company move are rarely about the UAE paperwork. They are about sequence, residence and reversibility, and they are expensive precisely because they feel like details until they are not.

• Filing before HMRC arrangements are agreed. Triggering the residence shift or the exit charge before you have notified HMRC and settled the tax position can leave you with a bill and no way back.
• Assuming the bank moves with the company. The entity continues; the bank relationship often does not, and trading with a frozen or unopened account stalls the whole move.
• Moving the registration but not the management. Keep central management and control at home and the company can stay tax resident there, which defeats the move and risks double taxation.
• Treating redomiciliation as reversible. Continuation strikes the company off the original register once complete. Get the order wrong and unwinding it is slow and costly.
• Stripping IP out separately. Moving IP out of the old entity as a side step can be a deemed disposal and a taxable event, when leaving it inside the continuing company would have avoided the charge.

Every one of these is avoidable with the route and sequence mapped in advance. None of them is recoverable cheaply after the fact.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I move my existing UK company to Dubai?

Not by physically transferring the UK Ltd itself. You have three routes: open a new UAE entity and wind the old one down, register a UAE branch of the existing company, or formally redomicile into a free zone that accepts continuation, such as ADGM, DIFC or RAK ICC. Which one fits depends on your contracts, IP and tax position.

What is redomiciliation of a company?

Redomiciliation, also called continuation, moves a company’s place of incorporation from one jurisdiction to another while keeping it the same legal entity. Its registration number, incorporation date, contracts, assets and history survive the move. Only the governing law and place of registration change, subject to shareholder and regulatory approval.

Which UAE free zones accept redomiciliation?

Several publish continuation procedures, including ADGM, DIFC, DMCC, JAFZA, RAKEZ and RAK ICC. ADGM and DIFC use English common law and suit holding and financial businesses; DMCC suits trading; RAK ICC is a cost-competitive offshore route. The right choice depends on your activity, licensing needs and substance requirements.

Do I still pay UK tax if I move my business to Dubai?

Possibly. A UK-incorporated company stays UK tax resident, and a company run from the UK can be caught by HMRC’s central management and control test even if registered abroad. Moving residence out of the UK can also trigger an exit charge on the company’s assets. Take UK tax advice before you file.

What is the exit charge when a company leaves the UK?

When a company ceases to be UK tax resident, HMRC treats it as having disposed of its chargeable assets at market value on the exit day, under TCGA 1992 section 185, which can create a taxable gain. The company must notify HMRC and settle arrangements before emigrating. The amount depends entirely on your assets.

Does my bank account and my contracts survive a redomiciliation?

In law, yes. Continuation preserves the entity, so contracts, licences and accounts remain with the same company. In practice, banks and counterparties often still require fresh KYC and re-onboarding, which can add weeks. Continuity of the entity is not the same as zero operational disruption.

How long does it take to redomicile a company to the UAE?

Plan for roughly six to eight weeks from the point your documents are fully notarised and attested, and eight to fourteen weeks end to end in many cases. Home-jurisdiction creditor-notice or tax-clearance windows are the usual cause of longer timelines, sometimes several months.

What does it cost to move a company to Dubai?

There is no single figure. The cost is built from the receiving authority’s fees, document attestation, legalisation and Arabic translation, advisory fees, any office or substance requirement, and possible transfer fees or an exit charge in your home country. It varies with the jurisdiction and how complex your entity is.

Map your route before you file anything

The company you already have is worth more than a quick answer off a search result. Redomiciliation preserves its legal identity, but your home jurisdiction may still charge an exit tax on the way out, and the sequence decides whether the move is clean or costly. Get the route and the order right before a single form is filed.

Book a structuring call and map your own company move, from the origin exit position through to the UAE licence, banking and compliance. If you would rather start with a question, speak to the Consultycs team about your own situation and we will tell you which route is yours.

Consultycs is a business setup and regulatory advisory firm headquartered in Jumeirah Lakes Towers, Dubai. It advises founders, investors, and corporates on UAE company formation, corporate tax, VAT, accounting, visas, corporate banking, and ongoing compliance. Rather than selling fixed packages, Consultycs designs each structure around the client’s business model and long-term tax position.