Buying Dubai property from Russia: a new treaty, and an empty credit

The confusion in the market comes from there having been an instrument since 2011. The Ministry of Finance status table describes that one as reaching the two states and their financial and investment institutions, so a private individual was never in it. The agreement that matters to a buyer is the one signed in Abu Dhabi on 17 February 2025, ratified by Federal Law No. 189-FZ of 7 July 2025, applying from 1 January 2026. Article 31 terminates the older one.

Article 6, paragraph 1 says income derived by a resident of one state from immovable property situated in the other “may be taxed” in that other state, and paragraph 3 extends that to letting. Article 13, paragraph 1 says the same of gains on sale. Those words give the Emirates a permission; they do not take away Russia’s charge, and reading them as if they did is the commonest error on this subject.

Relief sits in Article 23, paragraph 2: tax payable in the Emirates “shall be allowed to be credited against the Russian tax imposed on that resident”, and the credit “shall not exceed the amount of the Russian tax on that income”. That is the credit method, and its value is the UAE tax you actually bear. For a private landlord that is nil.

Cabinet Decision No. (49) of 2023, Article (2), paragraph 2 provides that real estate investment income of a natural person is not treated as a business subject to UAE Corporate Tax, regardless of the amount of turnover, and Article (1) defines real estate investment to include the sale, leasing, sub-leasing and renting of property. Nothing paid means nothing to credit, and Article 232, paragraph 1 of the Tax Code makes the same point from the Russian end: foreign tax is not set against Russian tax unless a treaty says it is. The Russian charge on Dubai rent therefore falls in full. That the income is Russian-taxable at all comes from Article 208, paragraph 3, which lists rent from property abroad and the proceeds of selling it among income from sources outside the Russian Federation.

The Federal Tax Service publishes the scale in force since 1 January 2025 as five bands on the year’s aggregated tax bases: 13 per cent up to 2.4m roubles, then 15, 18, 20 and 22 per cent at 5m, 20m and 50m. Those figures are the tax service’s own.

What we will not do is tell you which band your Dubai rent lands in. Whether foreign rental income is aggregated into that scale or computed in a separate base is not settled by anything we could read on a government domain, and a guide that guesses there is guessing at the number that matters most.

Article 13 puts the gain on the same footing as the rent: the Emirates may tax it, Russia credits what the Emirates charge, and the Emirates charge nothing. Russian domestic law has a holding period exemption at Article 217.1 of the Tax Code, whose paragraph 2 exempts income from the sale of an item of immovable property once the minimum period is met and whose paragraph 4 sets that period at five years outside the listed cases. The text carries no territorial words.

An absence of a territorial limit is not a statement that the article reaches a Dubai apartment, and we found no ministry or tax service letter saying that it does. The five year period is printed as what the article says, not as a conclusion about foreign property. Settle it before a sale rather than after one.

Three published duties. Income from sources outside Russia is declared on form 3-NDFL, and the tax service names people who received income from sources outside the Russian Federation among those who must file, by 30 April of the following year, with payment by 15 July. An account opened, closed or amended at a bank outside Russia is notified within one month under Article 12, part 2 of Federal Law No. 173-FZ of 10 December 2003. A report on the movement of funds on it is due by 1 June each year under Article 12, part 7 and Government Decree No. 1365 of 12 December 2015.

The annual report has exemptions, and one turns on a list. It does not apply where the individual spent more than 183 days outside Russia in the year, nor where the account sits in a state that exchanges financial information automatically with Russia and the year’s movements stay under 600,000 roubles. The Emirates is item 46 on that list, in the annex to the tax service order of 14 October 2025, which cuts both ways: the de minimis is available, and the framework for the data to reach Moscow exists. Buying the apartment itself triggers nothing, and we found no published duty to report the acquisition of foreign real estate as such.

Foreign ownership is a carve-out. Article (4) of Law No. (7) of 2006 restricts ownership to UAE and GCC nationals and companies wholly owned by them, then permits freehold for non-UAE nationals in certain areas determined by the Ruler, which Regulation No. (3) of 2006 sets by numbered land plot rather than by marketing name. Off-plan instalments sit in an account which Article (9)(1) of Law No. (8) of 2007 requires to be “dedicated exclusively to the construction of that Real Estate Development project”: ring-fencing, not a refund guarantee. The Land Department publishes its transfer fee as 2 per cent on the seller and 2 per cent on the buyer, and a buyer bearing all 4 per cent is market practice.

On the residence route the two UAE government sources agree on the money and disagree on the term. The government portal gives the investor category a “Minimum capital of AED 2 million” and states five years for real estate; the ICP service page asks for a letter confirming ownership worth at least AED 2,000,000, states that “The property must be fully owned by the investor”, and gives ten years. We print both rather than pick one. AED 2,000,000 is about 47.3 million roubles at the rate below.

The Bank of Russia sets an official dirham rate daily, and the rate for 4 September 2026 is 23.6589 roubles. On it an AED 3,000,000 apartment is about 71.0 million roubles. The 4 per cent Land Department fee adds AED 120,000, roughly 2.8 million roubles; the trustee fee at that value is AED 4,200, the title deed AED 250, and the knowledge and innovation fees AED 10 each. Registration is about AED 124,470, roughly 2.9 million roubles, for around 73.9 million roubles all in.

Every rouble figure here carries its date. The price is fixed in dirhams and the Bank of Russia rate is reset each working day, so the same apartment is a different rouble number next month. Model the purchase on the cost of buying calculator, check the threshold on the golden visa calculator, and see what is selling in the off-plan catalogue.

Sanctions and banking. We publish nothing on sanctions screening or on which banks will process a transfer, because we found no primary government publication a buyer could rely on: measures published by the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom bind their own persons rather than a Dubai developer, and no UAE Central Bank notice addressed to Russian buyers exists that we could find. That belongs with your bank and a sanctions lawyer.

We do not say which rate band applies to foreign rent, and we do not assert that Article 217.1 reaches property abroad. We read only the English text the UAE Ministry of Finance publishes and located no UAE ratification instrument, so the agreement is in force on the Russian ministry’s record rather than on both, and the Tax Code articles come from a commercial consolidation rather than an official publisher. We do not print a golden visa duration as settled, because two government pages give different ones, and we found no official statement on whether an off-plan or mortgaged property qualifies.