How to check a residency consultant before you pay them
The advisory market around golden visas and second passports is largely unregulated. Six checks that take an afternoon and filter out most of what goes wrong.
Read on →Residency
What a property purchase does for your status — and what it does not. Written for someone comparing jurisdictions, not for someone already sold on one.
Remote work visas and the tax trap nobody mentions
Dozens of countries now offer a permit to live there while working for a foreign employer. The visa is the easy part. The problem it creates sits with your employer and with two tax authorities.
Read on →
Abu Dhabi for foreign buyers: investment zones, title and how it differs from Dubai
The capital runs its own register, its own zones and its own pace. What a foreigner may own there, how the market behaves differently, and why it is not simply a cheaper Dubai.
Read on →
Second citizenship: which routes actually work, and what they cost you
Investment programmes, descent, naturalisation and marriage are four different mechanisms with different timelines and different risks. An honest map, including the routes that have narrowed.
Read on →
Leaving a tax residency: what has to be done before you move, not after
Exit charges, notification duties, reporting on foreign accounts and companies. The obligations that arise from the change of status itself rather than from any income — and that get missed because nobody bills you for them.
Read on →
Opening a bank account in the UAE as a new resident
Residency helps but does not make it automatic. What compliance actually asks for, why applications are declined without explanation, and how the property purchase itself fits into the process.
Read on →
Sponsoring your family in the UAE: what changes when the children grow up
Spouse and children follow the resident who sponsors them. The rules on sons reaching adulthood, on parents, and on what happens if the sponsor loses their own status — the parts families discover late.
Read on →
The routes into UAE residency, compared
Employment, company ownership, property, the Golden Visa, the freelance permit, retirement, remote work. Seven ways in, each with a different sponsor, a different renewal cycle and a different failure mode.
Read on →
UAE residency against the European golden visas: what you are actually choosing between
Both are residence permits obtained through investment, and there the similarity ends. Schengen access, the path to a passport, tax exposure and holding costs pull in different directions.
Read on →
Tax residency and the 183-day rule: why counting days is not enough
Almost everyone plans a move around one number. In practice both countries apply their own tests, and days are only the first of them. What actually decides where you are tax resident.
Read on →
What buying property in Dubai does not give you
Ownership is straightforward here. The confusion is about everything people assume comes attached to it — citizenship, tax residency, a work permit, schooling rights. A list of what a title deed is not.
Read on →
The UAE Golden Visa: how it actually works
A ten-year renewable residency that does not require you to live here and does not lead to citizenship. What it gives, what it costs to keep, and the three misconceptions that cause most of the disappointment.
Read on →Ask a question
Telegram is the fastest way — I answer personally.
Message on Telegram