My company is based abroad and I want to operate in the UAE — a branch or a separate subsidiary?

A branch isn't a legal entity separate from its foreign parent — it's an extension of it. If you maintain a fixed or permanent place in the UAE through which the foreign company's business is actually carried on (not just storing or displaying goods, or purely preparatory activities), that meets the Permanent Establishment test under Article 14 of the Corporate Tax Law, and the branch becomes subject to UAE corporate tax on income attributable to it. More important than the tax itself: there's no liability shield — any obligation or legal dispute at the branch traces straight back to the parent company in its home jurisdiction.

A subsidiary, by contrast, is a separate UAE legal entity with its own financial identity, and is treated as a resident person for tax purposes — meaning it files its own return and can access the exemptions and incentives available to residents, including the participation exemption on its own investment income. Liability is confined to the subsidiary's own capital, with recourse to the parent only in rare cases of piercing the corporate veil. The choice isn't purely a tax question — if you need full flexibility and a clean separation of risk, a subsidiary is the sounder structure, provided it's actually managed from within the UAE rather than existing only on paper. RASEEKH helps you weigh both against your actual operating footprint, not the option that's easiest to file.