Dubai retirement calculator

The United Arab Emirates charges an individual no income tax — not on a salary, not on capital gains, not on dividends, interest or rent received personally. So in a Dubai retirement plan, gross and net are the same number and every withdrawal is 1:1. What that actually changes, and what it doesn't, is the point of this page: the figures below all come from Coastline's UAE projection engine, run for a single resident retiring at 60 with a plan that has to last to 95.

If you hold a US passport or green card, read this first

The United States taxes its citizens and permanent residents on worldwide income, wherever they live. Moving to the UAE does not end that. You still file a US return every year, and you are still taxed on your investment income and capital gains. The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion and the foreign housing exclusion can wipe out US tax on a salary earned abroad, and foreign tax credits offset tax you actually paid elsewhere — but in a jurisdiction with no income tax there is no foreign tax to credit, and neither provision shelters dividends, interest or realised gains. A zero-tax country is not tax-free for a US filer.

This calculator models the local position only. It does not model US expatriate taxation, the FEIE, PFIC rules, foreign-account reporting or the exit tax, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. A UAE resident who is not a US person can take these figures at face value; a US person cannot. If you are a US person, run the numbers as a US taxpayer too, in the retirement calculator, and take the more conservative of the two.

How much you need to retire in Dubai, by lifestyle

Retiring at 60 with a 35-year horizon, 6% nominal return, 3% inflation, no pension income and no property:

Notice that the withdrawal rate in the last column is identical on every row, at 4.46%. That is not a rounding artefact — it is the clearest single consequence of a zero tax rate. In a US or British plan the safe rate falls as you spend more, because a bigger withdrawal pushes you into higher brackets and a rising share of it is lost to tax. Here there are no brackets to climb, so the answer scales perfectly: double the lifestyle, double the portfolio.

Retiring earlier costs more, and the engine can price it

The same AED 300,000 lifestyle, funded from different ages to 95:

Going at 45 instead of 65 costs AED 1,950,000 more capital for exactly the same lifestyle — 26.9× spending against 20.4×. The safe rate falls with the horizon, not with your tax bill, which is why a single flat "4% rule" is wrong in both directions here: too cautious at 65, too generous at 45. See the safe withdrawal rate calculator for the same question asked of a US portfolio.

Where the zero rate really pays: the years before retirement

Here is the part most "retire in Dubai" articles skip. A tax-free jurisdiction barely shrinks your retirement number — but it transforms how fast you can reach it. Running the same salary through Coastline's US engine and its UAE engine, year one looks like this. Both columns are in US dollars, deliberately: the US answer depends on where its tax brackets fall, so it can only be compared against a salary in the currency those brackets are written in.

The fourth column is, by construction, exactly the third column of a tax return: on a $150,000 package the difference is $36,209 a year, an effective 24.1% — and that is the friendly version of the US case, because it is modelled in Texas, which levies no state income tax at all. Even with the US worker deferring the full $24,500 into a 401(k), their bill is still $30,329. Invested rather than paid, $36,209 a year is the whole reason Gulf expatriate savings rates look the way they do; the Gulf expat comparison follows that money for a full career.

And the part that costs you: nobody is holding a pension for you

The UAE's GPSSA pension scheme covers Emirati and GCC nationals. An expatriate is outside it, which means there is no state pension at the end of a Dubai career, no employer plan with a tax break attached, and no public healthcare entitlement once employment stops. Every dirham of your retirement is money you saved yourself.

The engine puts a price on that. The next three figures are deliberately in US dollars, since they are being compared against a US taxpayer whose answer depends on where their brackets fall. A retiree spending $100,000 a year needs $2,240,000 with no income tax, against $2,380,000 for a US retiree in Texas with no pension income — a saving of only $140,000, about 6.3%. Now give that US retiree the $47,259 a year of Social Security that a $150,000 career earns, and they need just $1,820,000: $420,000 less than the tax-free expat. In the spending phase, a state pension is worth far more than a zero tax rate. The zero rate wins on the way up, and loses on the way down.

Two practical consequences follow. First, your residency almost certainly ends when your employment does, so a Dubai plan needs a decision about where the retirement itself happens — and if that is somewhere with income tax, the drawdown years are taxed there. Second, retirement healthcare is yours to fund: employer medical cover ends with the job, so put a realistic premium in the retired phase rather than leaving it at zero.

The end-of-service gratuity, and what it is worth

UAE law does give you one lump sum. Under Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021, Art. 51, an employee earns 21 days of basic salary for each of the first five years of service and 30 days for each year after that, capped at two years' wage, with nothing payable below one year of continuous service — and allowances such as housing and transport are excluded from the calculation. On a flat AED 300,000 package that is 60% basic, 25 years of service earns 23.50 months of basic wage: AED 352,500.

Set against the AED 7,240,000 that same person would need to retire at 55 on AED 300,000 a year, the gratuity is 4.9% of the target — roughly 1.18 years of spending. It is a genuine and welcome cash event, and it is not a pension. The end-of-service gratuity calculator works through the formula, the cap, and how the other Gulf states compare.

What this does and doesn't model

• No state pension, and no tax-advantaged retirement account. Neither exists for an expatriate in any of these jurisdictions, so the projection pays no benefit and holds no wrapper balance. A 401(k), 457(b), Roth, RRSP, ISA or HSA balance you arrive with is folded into the ordinary investment account on day one — which is exactly what it is locally: a pot whose growth and withdrawals are untaxed. Nothing disappears when you switch country.
• The zero-tax claim covers employment and personal investment income. A natural person carrying on a business in the UAE falls under Corporate Tax at 9% once that business's turnover passes AED 1,000,000 in a calendar year. Employment income, personal investment income and personal real-estate income sit outside it. This engine models the first two and does not model the 9% charge on a sole trader above that threshold.
• Employee social-insurance contributions are disclosed, not deducted. In the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Brunei an expatriate employee genuinely has no employee-side deduction — those schemes bind nationals. Four jurisdictions do have one (Bahrain 1%, the Bahamas about 4.65%, Cayman 5%, Monaco about 6.85%) and the engine leaves it out, because it also leaves out the contributory pensions those payments buy; modelling the cost without the benefit would understate the plan. Add it to your living expenses if it matters to you.
• Oman is deliberately not included. Oman legislated a personal income tax that takes effect 1 January 2028 — 5% on income above OMR 42,000, for residents and expatriates alike. A retirement plan runs for decades, so showing Oman as tax-free would be wrong for all but the first two years of it.
• The end-of-service gratuity is modelled, with limits. It is paid once, in the first retirement year, on the last basic wage, using the market-standard 30-day month. One continuous service record is assumed — a career break or an employer change resets real service and the engine does not — and a couple's entitlement is computed on their combined final employment income, which is exact when both have the same tenure and optimistic otherwise.
• Consumption taxes and fees are out of scope. VAT (5% across the Gulf, 10% in the Bahamas, 15% in Saudi Arabia), customs and import duty, municipality and housing fees, property tax, stamp duty and work-permit fees are all excluded — exactly as their US, Canadian and UK equivalents are excluded from those engines. In Cayman and the Bahamas import duty is the main reason the cost of living is high, so put it in your living-expenses figure.
• Visas and residency are not modelled at all. Nothing here says whether you may live or stay in a given jurisdiction, and a zero tax rate is worth nothing if the residency ends.
• The math is shown. Every figure in the calculator has a click-through breakdown, and the methodology page sets out the sources.

Assumptions above: a single resident, 6% nominal return, 3% inflation, a horizon to 95, no property, no rental income and no home-country pension. A home-country pension is supported — enter it as a pension phase and the engine pays it in full and untaxed. Educational projections, not financial or tax advice.

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