Meghna Dixit spent four years freelancing as a creator and digital strategist in Dubai before founding her own company. “The biggest misconception about freelancing? People confuse self-employed with ‘free’,” she tells The National. This, she says, is why so many professionals underestimate what independence actually costs – before they have a single client, let alone a stable income.In the UAE, where the self-employment infrastructure has expanded considerably in recent years, the entry price for the necessary legal work starts at a few thousand dirhams for those already holding a valid residence visa and climbs past Dh40,000 for a first-year full set-up with a business licence. Between those two points sits a layered landscape of free zone permits, visa fees, mandatory insurance and recurring platform charges that shape the economics of going it alone.Visa and licence come firstFor professionals already on a sponsored visa, licensed set-up provider Dynamic Freelancer, for example, prices a professional services permit at Dh6,500 plus VAT. For those requiring the complete package – permit (Dh11,500), municipality fee (Dh350), unemployment insurance (Dh350) and medical insurance (Dh1,500 plus VAT) – the total comes to Dh14,888. Then, if you’re invoicing via the company, they take a 2.49 per cent processing fee on top of that.Across the broader market, options vary considerably....
This page contains an attributed headline and the preview text supplied through the publisher’s RSS feed. Copyright in the original reporting belongs to The National.
