Hoxton Life

Essential Tax Tips for UK Expats Moving to Dubai with Dan Abbott of Hoxton Wealth

• Hoxton Wealth

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In this episode of Hoxton Life, host Sam Oakes speaks with Dan Abbott, a UK and UAE-licensed financial planner, about the critical tax and financial planning considerations for UK expats living in Dubai. Dan shares his inspiring career journey, transitioning from an accountant in the UK to a financial planner in Dubai. He also explains why joining Hoxton Wealth was—and remains—the best option for anyone pursuing a career in international financial planning.

Dan discusses the importance of proactive tax planning, even in a tax-friendly country like the UAE, where UK expats often face hidden tax obligations on properties and businesses back home. He also breaks down the UAE’s gratuity system and why expats must take charge of their retirement planning through early and consistent saving.

The episode covers practical tips for setting up a business in Dubai, explaining the differences between free zones and mainland operations and how to choose the best option based on your goals. Dan also highlights the unique opportunities for financial planners in Dubai, where they can serve UK clients while enjoying the benefits of a tax-free income. He credits Hoxton Wealth for providing unparalleled support, regulatory compliance, and a structured environment that allows financial planners to succeed on a global stage.

Key Takeaways:

  • Proactive Tax Planning: Even in the UAE, UK expats must plan carefully to avoid tax issues on property, business ownership, and eventual returns to the UK.
  • Retirement Savings: The UAE’s gratuity system is not enough to fund retirement. Starting personal savings early is essential for financial security.
  • Business Setup in Dubai: Understand the pros and cons of free zones vs. mainland setups and seek professional advice to align your strategy with your goals.
  • A Career at Hoxton Wealth: Dan explains why Hoxton Wealth’s structure, resources, and regulatory framework make it the ideal choice for international financial planners.

Thinking about moving to Dubai or exploring a career in international financial planning? Connect with Hoxton Wealth today for expert advice tailored to UK expats and financial planners. Visit Hoxton Wealth or get in touch to take the first step.

Ready to start your international financial planning career?

Hoxton Wealth is looking for ambitious individuals ready to take their careers to the next level. Whether you're interested in international financial planning, compliance, client servicing, or marketing roles within the financial sector, we offer unparalleled opportunities for growth and success.

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Speaker 1:

I'd given you the advice. I told you what the right thing to do was. Why did you go with this person who's ultimately given you the wrong advice? He said he just made it sound better, so making a move could potentially well did ultimately save him £10 million in terms of the company sales.

Speaker 2:

Why do you think it might benefit a financial planner to come out here to the UAE?

Speaker 1:

First and foremost, obviously you know people out here. At the moment they can make use of double taxation agreements where they can sort of extract money from their pensions tax-free. But the important thing is well, what do they do with that money once they've extracted it? We've been out here for nearly 10 years. I understand the country, but also my background in accounting. Knowing what's important to them from a business perspective puts me I would say in a unique position.

Speaker 2:

I'm now saying to advisors unless you've got a book of business in the UK, if you're coming out here just to start from scratch, it's going to be really really hard.

Speaker 1:

You still have to file that tax return in the UK if it's on UK property, and the amount of people that miss that or don't do it is crazy. I've never met anyone who is as resilient as he is. I have no doubt that Hoxton will still be around in a long time.

Speaker 2:

Dan, thanks so much for joining me today on the Hoxton Life podcast. How are you?

Speaker 1:

Good, thank you. Good to be here, Good man.

Speaker 2:

Well, you've been here a while, over 10 years nearly.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, coming up to nine, 10 years in Dubai, quite a while now.

Speaker 2:

Fantastic, I'll tell you what. Let's kick things off. Then let's start with your career path, your journey.

Speaker 1:

When did you start?

Speaker 1:

here, In Dubai. I came with KPMG over here. So prior to coming to Dubai I was an accountant in the UK for several years, did accounts, tax returns. We had a specialist sort of area. We focused on dentists. So the practice that I worked at back in the UK had around 75% of all of the dentists in England tend to use that practice. And then, yeah, I moved out here with KPMG as an auditor With them for a couple of years before I joined TALales as a financial controller, senior accountant, and then I moved into the wealth management industry. Before Hoxton it was another company out here, a competitor of Hoxton's I was only with them for around nine months. I was a finance manager there and then I moved to Hoxton as a finance manager, then their finance director, and then ultimately transitioned into financial advice and tax advice.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, quite a few changes quite a few changes and quite an interesting career path as well, because I have spoken to numerous people on the financial planner life podcast that have made that transition from accountancy into financial planning and it's been quite a an interesting journey for a lot of them. It's very it can be very, very different, um, but there are a lot, obviously, a lot of similarities as well, and obviously having a tax and accountancy background puts you in a great position when you're talking to business owners or you're talking to individuals who are a bit nervous and a bit worried about their tax situation, which often happens in Dubai right?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely. You know, like you said, I was a chartered accountant in the UK and now I focus on financial planning. And now I focus on financial planning, but mainly focusing on the tax aspect of financial planning because of my background in accountancy. Out here there is very little in the way of tax, so people may think it's not that important, but it is still important. For people who are expats. Maybe they've got UK properties where they still have tax implications or in terms of their financial planning, ultimately they're going to go back to the uk or another european country. In a lot of instances, planning now for the tax implications is really important to make sure that they can have the retirement that they want. Yeah, no, fantastic do?

Speaker 2:

people tend to bury their head of sand in sand a little bit around tax. When they come out here, they forget.

Speaker 1:

They forget like that there's certainly plenty of sand to bury your head in, um, but yeah, they, they do definitely. I think out here there's something, something called the gratuity scheme, which is what people have instead of a pension in. In the uk you're almost forced to save around eight percent per year combination of you and your company towards your pension. Out here there's a gratuity scheme where when you leave a position that you're in, they make a one-off payment to you. The average of that gratuity scheme though when you get to the point when you retire or when you leave the company is around it works out to around 2 or 3% per year. So when you compare that to the pension in the UK, it's a fraction.

Speaker 1:

So people planning for their retirement themselves, taking the initiative, having a general investment account and putting money away regularly is really important and a lot of people just completely miss it. Don't do it until it's highlighted to them or until it's too late. The sooner they can start saving, the better. I think I was reading a couple of weeks ago. There was a stat saying someone that saves in their 20s because of compounded interest and so on, they're likely or can have around 80 times for each pound that they save, it can be around worth around 80 80 pound when they retire at 65. As you go into your 30s that goes into the 50 pounds. As you go into your 40s it's around 20, 50s it's around eight. So the earlier you start saving, obviously the much better it is later down the line so finance to financial planning.

Speaker 2:

What's that journey been like?

Speaker 1:

um, it was very different. Um, so, basically the way, the way it happened, or why it happened, when I first moved into the wealth management industry, like I said, I was a finance manager or finance director, and for me, I started studying wealth management rather than accounting because I wanted to understand the industry that I was in. Ultimately, the way I looked at it was as a finance director. My customers who I needed to know about were essentially the consultants that worked for the company. They were the revenue generators, generators so ultimately, as a salaried employee, they were my customers. So I wanted to understand what they did, so I decided to do some exams, do some studying, enjoyed it, did my exams, so I did my UK exams, did my US exams, did my UAE exams, european ones. And then every six months or so in Hoxton they have a conference for the staff, for the consultants, to update them on training, new things, so everyone stays up to date with regulations, different sorts of opportunities that there are for people out here.

Speaker 1:

At one of those conferences, chris was talking about his process in terms of financial advice and I was taking notes. About a week later I got an email from Chris just saying hi, dan, I noticed in the conference you were taking more notes than anyone else. I know that you've done your exams. Is this something that you're looking to move into? And I'd given it a little bit of thought, but it wasn't at the top of my mind to do so.

Speaker 1:

So I had a meeting with Chris, spoke to him, spoke about my concerns of moving over. One of the big concerns that I had was, obviously, as a salaried member of staff. I have a wife, I have children daughter, twins. I needed to have money coming in. So the majority of income from financial advice tends to be based on what you do or the business that you generate. So that was a big concern of mine. They had a package sort of a hybrid salaried package for people on a pathway and he agreed to put me on that if I wanted to, and that was the the path I went down. So, yeah, it was. Uh, that's what brought the change about nice.

Speaker 2:

What were some of the challenges then? Stepping across into financial planning, anything at all that?

Speaker 1:

yeah, I guess there were two big things for me. Um, the first one was the, the financial advice. Especially in the middle east, there's a lot of cold outreach, um, you know, to generate, generate business essentially, in a crude way of putting it and that was something that I wasn't great at. I'd always worked back office, so, you know, I hadn't had to go out and generate business. It was a case of I was doing the accounts for companies and so on, so I didn't have to go out and generate business. So that was difficult for me. Um, so I sort of decided to approach generating business in a different way, um, going down the route of giving seminars to schools, things like that, and arranging introducer agreements with, you know, people that like-minded, whether that be accountants, whether it be financial advisors, whatever it may be I went down the route of generating introducer agreements and, and that was the focus that I had.

Speaker 1:

Another thing that I did find difficult was that you know the sales side of things. Ultimately, you know people may say, oh, you shouldn't be a salesman in the financial advice world. It should all be about you know what's right for the client and so on. I get that, but sales isn't, you know, isn't wrong within the industry in my view, and I'll give you an example of why, and it's it's something that hit me about three or four months into being a financial advisor. So I had a meeting with with a prospect. I'd gone through his situation, done a flat fine with him, understood him and giving him some advice that this is what I think you should do while you're here. Basically it was to open a general investment account and save regularly. He disappeared.

Speaker 1:

Three months later he contacted me and said can we have another meeting? So I had a meeting with him and he said I think I've made a mistake. I went ahead with another advisor out here in the UAE and signed up to something that I probably shouldn't have, which was like a contractual agreement for him to save a certain amount, but it wasn't right for him. It had high fees and things like that and it wasn't right for his situation. So I said to him I'd given you the advice. I told you what the right thing to do was. Why did you go with this person who's ultimately given you the wrong advice? He said he just made it sound better. So from that day forward, it showed me the importance of sales and it doesn't have to be that you know you're selling to someone incorrectly, as long as you do it with a good sort of moral grounding and a good moral compass.

Speaker 1:

I think sales is really important and I decided if I was going to stay in the financial advice industry. It was quite a bit of a turning point for me. At that point I was either thinking about going back into back office or staying in you know, in financial advice, and I decided to stay in financial advice. But it needed to be. I had to do something different. So I made a conscious decision to go out and learn how to sell and I felt I had a moral obligation to do that because I knew I was going to give the right advice, or what I thought was the right advice. You know I was doing it with a good conscience.

Speaker 1:

I also could see that there were people out there, unfortunately, who wouldn't give the right advice. You know, yes, they're in the industry, but not everyone acts how they should. But if they can sell better than I can, ultimately, if I'm trying to give someone the right advice and I can't sell as good as someone else, that's on me. So, even if I know what they should have and I can't project it to them in such a way which is going to help them go forward with it. That's my fault if someone can sell better than me.

Speaker 1:

So I felt that if I was going to stay in that industry, I had a moral obligation to learn how to sell and to learn sales. So I put a lot of time into that. Um, one of the biggest sort of influences from my side was someone called Dr Robert Cialdini, who had a he's wrote several books, um, and he just went through the power of influence and how to sell, essentially, but from from an academic perspective rather than from, you know, your Jordan Belfort perspective. So yeah, that was the route I went down and it did make a big difference, definitely.

Speaker 2:

Very good, very good. So kind of moral and ethical stance towards selling yourself, selling your services and selling the solutions that are going to benefit and help the client in the long run or short term. Doing the right thing, but selling it in the right way so they understand it yeah, that was.

Speaker 1:

You know that was the route I went down and you know you go through a process. You have to understand the client. You have to understand what their needs are, what their wants are, and tailor the advice to them. It's not, you know, a one-size-fits-all and, like I said, that's why I sort of learned more, a lot more, about influence and what you could do beforehand. Before actually saying this is what you should do to sort of set the stage.

Speaker 1:

I think the way something that I read put it was that the product or the advice that you're giving someone, that's the seed. But a lot of people can have a different seed. What's really important is the soil that you're about to put that seed in, and that's where the groundwork is. You need to make sure that you've gone through the correct sales process to get the groundwork done correctly before you put in the seed, to get them to go ahead with it. And it sounds like it's manipulation, but it's absolutely not manipulation, it's sales. As long as it's done in good conscious, it's definitely the right thing to do.

Speaker 1:

And to give you an example, a really interesting example from one of the things that I did read there was a study, I think it was in belgium and they got a group of people. They put them into three separate rooms. In the first room they had a picture of just someone standing on their own. In the second room they had a picture of two people standing, but with a big space between them. And in the third room they had a picture of two people standing side by side.

Speaker 1:

In the experiment they accidentally knocked some things off a table and they counted how many of the people in the room helped to pick up those things or, you know, wanted to help. In the first room it was 20. The second room it was 20. In the third room it was 80 and that's the room with two people standing together. So that's sort of like the, the power of sales, so to speak, what you do outside of just showing the product how important it is. Now the really interesting thing about that experiment you know it's powerful in itself, but the really interesting thing, the people in the experiment were 18 months old, so it was babies that were helping.

Speaker 2:

So it just shows how sort of primitive sales can be no, I like that great example, fantastic accounting, then. Do you think having an accountant accountancy background has helped you in financial planning?

Speaker 1:

yeah, uh, definitely. It gives me, um, a different perspective. You know, a lot of the time when you speak to people with the financial planning side of things, there's a really big disconnect between accounting and financial planning, especially for business owners. What I mean by that is you'll have an accountant and they're looking at your company. So what can I do to reduce your corporate tax, corporate profit, so that you pay less corporate tax? Then you'll have a financial planner who will look at you as an individual and think what can I do so they pay less personal tax or so they have more money in retirement and so that their retirement is what they need it to be?

Speaker 1:

But ultimately that business is usually an extension of the individual. It's an asset that they own. So when you look at it collectively, it may be that as an accountant, I'm saying to the client okay, if you can put more through in salaries, it's going to be a tax deductible expense and it means you're going to have a lower profit for corporate tax reasons. But that salary then has implications on an individual basis. And then, as an individual, they may say well, if you can take more in dividends, then you're going to pay a lower tax rate. So take more in dividends. But the only way you can take dividends is if you paid corporate tax on it first. So my background allowed me to look at both the company side and the individual side and plan more efficiently, I think. And when you look at pensions in particular, they're very tax efficient things from a company perspective and from an individual perspective. So the financial planning element really does come into it.

Speaker 2:

It at that point nice and what about things like moving to dubai? There's a lot of people at the moment that are considering moving to dubai. The current state of the world, the uk, for example. People are looking at dubai and thinking hang on, it's tax free, I can go and live over there, I don't have to pay any tax. I've got a business in the uk and if I move to dubai I don't have to pay tax on that. Should we take a look at that?

Speaker 1:

yeah, absolutely. You know there's like you said. There are little to no taxes over here. Now they they are gradually bringing in some taxes. You know, back in 2018 they brought in VAT, but it was at 5% compared to the UK, which is 20%. And more recently last year they brought in corporate tax, but you get a lot of reliefs and it's only 9% compared to the 25% rate, say, in the UK at the moment. So it is much more tax friendly out here.

Speaker 1:

But I think what's really important for people like you mentioned, who are planning on moving over here, is to plan properly. Speak to someone who does understand the international landscape. Speak to someone that understands they're planning on coming to the uae, understands how the uae tax system works, but also understands how the uk tax system works for people who do live overseas. And again, to give you an example of someone who and it's a real life example it happened not so long ago there was an individual in the uk who had a business. They'd started it from scratch about 12 years ago. The business was now worth 50 million pounds. He'd had an offer for 50 million pounds. If he would have sold it whilst he was in the UK, he would have been subject to capital gains tax on pretty much all of it.

Speaker 1:

There used to be some allowances for entrepreneurs. You used to get sort of 10 million pounds worth of entrepreneur's relief where you'd pay a lower rate of tax, let's say 10. That got reduced to 1 million pound, um at 10. Next year it's going to go up to 14, year after it's going up to 18. So every year it's getting worse from a tax perspective. In the uk that individual would have paid 20, like current rates, 24 it would have been 20 previously, currently it's 24 on the vast majority of that, 50 million pounds. So you know, let know, let's say 20%, it's 10 million pounds. If he would have moved out here first and become tax resident, he would have had to stay out here for a period of time there's things that you do have to look at but he wouldn't have paid that tax. So making a move could potentially well did ultimately save him 10 million pounds in terms of the company sale. So that's how important it is to get that advice beforehand, I think.

Speaker 2:

So people thinking about coming to dubai. They've got a business. They're thinking if they come over here they can live here, continue running their business in the uk and not pay any tax on that. Can you, are you in a position to be able to explain how that actually works?

Speaker 1:

yeah. So there's two sides of it. There's the people who literally just set up a business in the UAE but stay in the UK, and then you have the people who come to the UAE and keep their UK business, and they're very different. So first and foremost it's something I get asked so often I live in the UK. Can I just go to the UAE set up a business? But to the UAE set up a business, but stay living in the UK but only pay UAE corporate taxes? The answer to that is no.

Speaker 1:

There's something called the place of effective management and control. So even if you have a UAE company, if you live in the UK and ultimately you control that UAE company from the UK, you're subject to UK corporate taxes on that company. It's treated like it's a UK company. On the flip side, if you move to the UAE and keep your UK company, you pay corporate taxes in the UK because the UK is a UK company. But those dividends that you take out of that company as a UAE resident, they're not subject to any tax because there's no dividend tax in the UAE, there's no income tax.

Speaker 1:

So when you extract the profits from the company, as long as it's already paid the corporate taxes. You're not going to pay any more tax from being over here, so they're the sort of main two ways that that you would answer that question. But yeah, the amount of times I hear people say oh, I'm staying in the UK, I'm just going to go and set up this UAE company, um, so that I can, I can pay less tax. It doesn't work like that, unfortunately. You have to move yourself. You know you have to be a non-UK tax resident to do that is there any rules on how long you know?

Speaker 2:

so if I'm living in, this is my situation right. So financial plan of life I'm setting up over here, but I do still look after the UK, so I still will do events in the uk. I still work with uk-based clients and if I set the business up over here and I'm working over there, is there a an amount of time that I'm allowed to do? That is there? How do I stay on the right side of?

Speaker 1:

tax from your individual perspective. Yes, there's an amount. So there's something called the statutory residency test in the uk um, it can be quite convoluted, but typically if your work, if you've got a job overseas, if you've got your job in the uae again, it's something that you have to look at in detail. But nine times out of ten, as long as you spend less than 90 days 91 days in the uk and less than 30 of those days working in the uk you would keep your non-uk tax residency status. If you do more than that, you become a uk tax resident and you're subject to uk tax on pretty much everything you earn um. So, yeah, there are rules around how much you can do in one country and in another, which people do need to be cognizant of. But, like I said, in general, if you do have a job in the uae um, usually you have 90 days 90 days typically, but it can be as low as 16, it can be as high as 180 um.

Speaker 1:

There's a process, a series of questions that you go through. You have sort of several tests and people always say to me oh, but I've only I've not got a house or I've not got this sufficient tie or these ties to the uk. That only matters after a certain point. So you would have, whether you're an overseas resident, what they call the automatic overseas residency test, which tests sort of three different criteria. If you fall into those, then you're just automatically overseas tax resident. Then you have the automatically UK tax resident, which again is a series of questions. If you fall into that category criteria then you're just automatically UK tax resident. It's not until you don't fall into any of those first two criteria or first two tests that you look at the sufficient ties test. So you know, people are like, oh, I've got these ties. It doesn't necessarily matter if you've not been through the first two steps or the first two tests.

Speaker 2:

Interesting stuff. Thanks, man. So what about trends then? Are you seeing many trends? Obviously, we're a global financial planning company. Are you seeing many trends at the moment out there in the market?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, there's definitely a few different trends. One thing I'm seeing a lot more of is people coming over from the US. To be fair, which I think is a newer thing, there's a lot more US people coming over. I tend to speak to people who come over from the US because, from a financial planning perspective, I'm US qualified and regulated, so I help them with that, but what we see a lot is people coming over because it's so tax efficient here.

Speaker 1:

Now, the thing with US people, though, is that if they have a US passport, they're a US citizen or a US green card holder. It doesn't matter where they go in the world. They still have to file tax returns in the US, subject to US taxes, and it's a very random fact, there's only two countries in the whole world that do that. Uh, the other one is eritrea, and I think their you know their gdp is the equivalent to that of the premier league or something like that, so it's not something that's, you know that significant when you compare it to the us. Um, so there's a lot of people that come over here and, actually, you know they're US citizens, but they want to relinquish their passport so they don't have to file US taxes anymore. So that's a big trend, a big thing that we're seeing at the moment. And also there's a lot of business owners like I said before, because of things like entrepreneurs relief going in the UK and the benefits of it being reduced year on year. We're seeing a lot more people coming out to the to the UAE from the UK with businesses and business owners who come out, they sell their company, maybe they stay here for five, six years and then and they do something else because it's saving them a significant amount. You know they're happy to move for however long they need to to to get those tax benefits ultimately and it's also a lifestyle thing as well it used to be.

Speaker 1:

I remember when I first came out, I came out with the plan of coming here for two years saving for a house deposit and going back to the UK.

Speaker 1:

That was nine years ago, ten years ago. It's not like that anymore. A lot of the people that I see coming over from the UK yes, they may be business owners, coming to sell their business or whatever it may be, but there's a lot more people also just coming to live here, to settle down, um, and they're like the you know what you would call more middle-class or working class, compared to the people that used to come out here, which you would come out for a high paid job for a couple of years. It's not like that anymore because the standard of living out here now it's so. It's so much more westernized, it's so easy for someone to live out here now and enjoy life. So, um, yeah, there's definitely more of a trend of if you're everyday person, coming out here to settle kids, go to school, things like that a lot of people would be interested in understanding how to set up a business here.

Speaker 2:

So they come and they think, well, now I want to set up a business here. So they come and they think, well, now I want to set up a business out here. What sort of advice would you have, or some explanation of how they can do that that's simplified for them to get their heads around?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's not that difficult. There's a big difference in terms of the cost out here. You know, in the UK it used to be £12, £13 to set up a business with a company's house. They did recently increase that to over £50. If you want to do it yourself Out here, you know you would struggle to set up a business for less than sort of £5,000.

Speaker 1:

So it's a big difference and it's a process, because you have the things like your Emirates ID, the visa process, the medicals. Typically, you're looking at three to four weeks. You know you would need to come out, go through the process of doing the medical, setting up the company, getting the trade license. Before that, though, you have to pick where you're going to set you set up your business. It's not just the case of you set up a company anywhere.

Speaker 1:

There are so many different free zones um, you have your mainland or you have free zones and, and trying to figure out which one is correct for you it can be quite difficult.

Speaker 1:

So, speaking to someone who understands, using an agent who knows how to do it, you know we help people with the process frequently, but it's about the individual what their business is going to be, what their purpose of them coming out here is because there are different benefits in different free zones in terms of, you know, whether it's governed by essentially western rules or not, whether it's tax efficient or not, there's there's lots of different reasons why you would go to one place rather than another when it comes to just the UAE, or just Dubai, or even Abu Dhabi, wherever it may be. So, um, yeah, I would say, you know, don't think it's something that you can come, come out and do really cheap. It's not, but the benefits that come with it, obviously, like we said, in terms of the tax efficiencies and stuff like that can be really beneficial. I think one thing to mention on that as well, though, is there are so many agents out here now company formation agents so just be careful, make sure that you get the right advice for you and you're setting up in the right place for you difference between the free zone and mainland.

Speaker 2:

Then what is what it says? Someone doesn't really understand.

Speaker 1:

Now, I didn't really understand the free zones when I came out here, so it'd be great for you to explain the difference between the two yeah, so a free zone is, is basically a, an area of the country or of dubai, um, and they'll their own rules, own tax rules or certain reliefs, certain reliefs over VAT and things like that. But it can be quite strict. So let's say, for instance, someone comes out and sets up a company in a free zone, they would get VAT reliefs and as long as they don't trade with anyone else in Dubai they're only trading overseas then they get significant reliefs. But if their plan is to, you know, to operate both in Dubai and overseas, then there's probably no point in them having that free zone initially. So understanding what the business process is going to be or what the business model is is really important from the get-go, Whereas on the mainland, which is basically the whole of Dubai, it may be that they have different rules around.

Speaker 1:

You know, if you have staff, maybe you have to hire a certain amount of local staff or Emiratis. There's certain rules like that which people don't realize. So that may be another reason why they go for free zones. But ultimately you're still in Dubai, you still have a business.

Speaker 2:

it's just that the rules rules around business and and operating may be slightly different why do you think it might benefit a financial planner to come out here to the uae? Um from the uk yeah, let's, let's talk about that, yeah yeah, well, first and foremost, obviously you know income tax.

Speaker 1:

They're not going to pay um income tax, so that's a big benefit. But the other side is they can still do exactly what they're doing in the UK. You know, they can still have the same clients. If you think back to prior to COVID, I think there was a lot more face-to-face meetings happening. Because of COVID. People were forced to work from home and a lot of people realize that you don't have to go and meet people. You don't have to be in the office day in, day out. You know you can. You can work remotely pretty much from anywhere, financial planners or financial advisors in particular though that you know they are going to have issues around licensing, um being regulated, but as long as they're with working under the umbrella of a company that is regulated in in the relevant jurisdictions, they're not really going to face that much friction in terms of moving out here. All they're going to do is make their income tax-free. So it definitely makes sense for a lot of people, depending on what their family life is, I guess yeah.

Speaker 2:

So that's the thing I kind of want them to get their heads around is that you can come out here, you can continue to service your clients in the uk and you can be paid without paying any reliable for sorry for for any income tax, which can be really significant. Now I often get advisors come to me and say well, can I just come out there and set my own company up as a financial advisor in dubai, for instance, and and do that myself? Like what? What do you think the answer to that is?

Speaker 1:

they can try, but it'd be very expensive typically because you do still have the license in the compliance side of things, the administration side of things. So it's not that straightforward, um, I think if if they were to come out and try to do it, it's. It's going to be time consuming as well because there's going to be individual rules out here, um, so usually it's going to make much more sense. So you're going to be individual rules out here, um, so usually it's going to make much more sense. So you're going to ultimately you're going to have to have that overarching license in the jurisdiction that your clients are in. Um, so getting all of those licenses, it's not a straightforward process. I'm sure chris or paul tate, who I know you've spoken to previously, would give you a lot more information on that and the process around it. But no, it, no, it's not going to be something they can just do independently.

Speaker 1:

But when you work for a financial advisory firm or a financial advice company wealth management company, hoxton, as an example you can have a lot of autonomy. You know you can do a lot of what you want to do. You can have your own clients. Obviously, there are licensing requirements that Hoxton would want to make sure that you're following, but it's not a case of your you know you're micromanaged or you have to do everything that the company says. You do have that freedom and that flexibility, um, as long as it complies with the regulations that they have in place. So it's. It's not a case of you know, I need to set up on my own. Just use the likes of hoxton, use their licenses and do it that way.

Speaker 2:

It makes sense there's differences here as well. With hoxton, you can't be an appointed representative. You can't set your own business up and then sit underneath hoxton it's, you know, it's not a network. Um, to be able to benefit from uh, no, income tax, you need to technically be employed, so you would always come underneath hoxton as an employee, and by doing that as well, there are benefits around the visas and the low costs and everything associated to it, the licensing, and then start to access all the jurisdictions that, yeah, um, hoxton have the insane amount of money they invest in marketing, branding and compliance. Do you feel secure? Do you feel secure knowing that you're looking after UK clients? You're looking after clients over here in the UAE? You're touching on US clients when you're doing your job. Do you feel like you are secure?

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. Let's take my UK clients, for instance. Hoxton started their life in the UK. It's what their bread and butter is, essentially where most of the clients I've originated from or will go back to not all but a significant proportion so, knowing that they are heavily regulated, but they're regulated in every single jurisdiction that we operate in, so that's really important, especially as an accountant. You know one of the.

Speaker 1:

Historically in the UAE you know the financial advice industry didn't have a great reputation. I do think as an accountant you know you're reporting to HMRC, typically in the UK, and if you get something wrong it can result in big penalties, it can result in big fines. So your ethical or your understanding of professional ethics and regulations has to be on point to make sure that you do everything correctly. I think historically that wasn't out here because the regulation wasn't quite as strong as it is now. But one thing Hoxton do do is comply with all those regulations and are regulated. So that gives me sort of peace of mind, knowing that what I'm doing for my clients is going to be the right thing. So yeah, that's another big factor the regulation and the money that goes into it, and that's mainly why someone couldn't just come out here and set up, because you know I have clients here in the UAE, in the UK, in the US, throughout Europe.

Speaker 2:

Thankfully, I know that Hoxton has a licensed entity in all of those jurisdictions, so everything that I'm doing is is correct and in a regulated manner and it means as well as the world becomes more mobile, your clients, if they start to move around, which a lot of them do when you meet them on an international basis, they tend to move around. It means you can continue servicing those clients absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

And you and that's something that I mentioned to all of my clients and people that I'm speaking to initially and my understanding was, one of Chris's big driving forces behind setting up Hoxton was to make sure that there was as many offices and as many jurisdictions as possible which were regulated. So when his clients did move Whether it's him or someone else in the company it's seamless for the client. And that's not just from a selfish business perspective Obviously you want to retain clients and retain business, but it's also from the perspective of the client Moving from one country to another. It's a big life change and if you can sort of remove some of that friction in the move by meaning that you can stay with the same advisor, I think that does go a long way. It does help a lot. Finances and managing money is one of the most important things for anyone, especially for their long-term career.

Speaker 2:

So, as a UK and UAE registered financial planner, what advice would you give to a financial planner considering to do the same as you financial planner?

Speaker 1:

what advice would you give to a financial planner considering to do the same as you? Um, I think, first and foremost, the training. For me, the training and doing everything properly is the most important thing, but it's not just a straightforward. I'll come out to the uae and I'll apply the same methods or the same principles that I've done in the UK. Obviously, in the UK there's a lot more by way of tax, so you know, usually you're helping your client to to save tax efficiently using pensions.

Speaker 1:

Like I said, pensions aren't really a thing out here because you know the main benefits of pensions are that when you pay in, you get tax relief on your salary that you would usually pay tax on. It grows tax-free in terms of capital gains tax and you get some relief when you pay in, you get tax relief on your salary that you would usually pay tax on. It grows tax-free in terms of capital gains tax and you get some relief when you take it out in terms of your pension commencement lump sum. It used to be well. It currently still is inheritance tax-free as well, which is scheduled to change in 2027. But you have these benefits in the UK. When you're in the UAE, let's take all of those benefits that I've just mentioned. The first one is that you get tax relief on your salary, but you're not paying tax on your salary here anyway, so that's irrelevant. The second one is that you get tax relief on the growth. Well, you don't pay capital gains tax here, so that's irrelevant. And the third one we mentioned was the pension commencement lump sum, taking money back out of it. Again, you don't pay income here on that anyway. So those three measures or pensions out here, you don't need to look at that, but they do still need to save.

Speaker 1:

So I think it's more a case of looking at the holistic planning what they plan on doing in the future and helping them to plan for that and certain life events as well in the future and helping them to plan for that and certain life events as well. You know, over there children out here are going to maybe go to another country to study. It's not so easy to get sort of student loans for university. If you've lived out here most of your life, you can't. You know most people in the uk if they want to go to university, their kids go to university, they get a student loan pretty much. You know everyone can out here you can't. Or if you do, it's going to be much harder to do. So the fees that you're going to pay would be sort of three times the amount and so on. So it's very different.

Speaker 1:

And planning for those different expenses and understanding what the environment is like out here, what is going to be important to people later down the line, it's very different to being in the uk, um, so I'd say you know, get a good understanding of what the situation out here is and make sure you look at everything from start to finish. And the most important thing is where they plan on being when they retire. Because even if you take pensions like we said about inheritance tax people out here at the moment you know they they can make use of double taxation agreements where they can sort of extract money from their pensions tax-free. But the important thing is well, what do they do with that money once they've extracted it? Because if they're then going to go back to the uk or go back to another country, how does it continue to grow? You know, are you going to pay lots of tax on it then?

Speaker 1:

So it's important to not only advise what they can do now but what they can do in the future. So if you take someone who maybe they're going to go and move to France, well, you can sort of use the benefits of an assurance V. Maybe they're going to go to the US, maybe they're going to go back to the UK there's all these different benefits. Australia, which is a big you know a big side of things for Hoxton People back to australia, well, there's significant benefits in terms of tax efficiencies from moving it into their superannuation fund. So it really is important that anyone moving out of the uk has a good understanding of other jurisdictions as well yeah, fantastic, you obviously got an accountancy background.

Speaker 2:

You mentioned that you like to work with accountants on an introducer basis. Yeah, what you know, what advice would you give to those accountants to work with you or where can you potentially help them with their client situation?

Speaker 1:

yeah, the main reason I work with accountants, I think, is because we understand each other. Um, a big thing is you know when a client is is leaving an accountant, when they're passing them, passing them on to someone else to look after, when they move overseas, it's important that that individual that they're moving on or is leaving them gets the correct advice. There's a very good chance that, a they're going to go back to the UK. If they go back to the UK, they're probably not going to want to go back to an accountant that's passed them on to someone who's not given them the correct advice or helped them how they should. And. B when people come out here to the UAE, the or help them how they should.

Speaker 1:

And. B when people come out here to the uae, the likelihood is that they're going to speak to other people, say from the uk and who maybe have been out here 10 years already and they're about to go back to the uk and they need to find a new accountant. So they're probably going to recommend the account that they've just left. From the actual client perspective, I think my background you know I've been out here for nearly 10 years I understand the country, but also my background in accounting. Knowing what's important to them from a business perspective puts me, I would say, in a unique position to be able to help their clients more than most when it comes to financial advice. So that's why I would say people should consider working with me.

Speaker 2:

What are the typical types of clients personas that you're dealing with?

Speaker 1:

Usually it's sort of you know, age 30s, 40s when it comes to business owners that are coming out. You know, help them set up out here in terms of their planning, their investments. Help them, if they are selling assets back in the UK, how they do that correctly to mitigate taxes. We have a lot of people that come out to the UAE as well which keep their property in the, who keep their property in the UK and rent it out. A massive thing I see so often is people that have come out here they've had properties in the UK continue to rent it out because the amount that they're earning on that property, net of fees and things like that, is less than the combined personal allowances of, say, a husband and wife or two spouse spouses. They assume that they don't need to do anything because it's below the personal allowance.

Speaker 1:

You still have to file that tax return in the UK if it's on UK property and the amount of people that miss that or don't do it is crazy. The reason you have to do it is because if you don't you can still get penalties from HMRC and for every year that you don't fix it or do it after a year, that penalty is probably around £1,500. So you think of someone that's been out here for 10 years. Maybe they've got a penalty with Hrc of 15 000 pound. Um, so again, just little things like that is important why, if an accountant or a finance advisor in the uk is is moving, helping a client move over to the uae, making sure that they do speak to someone like it doesn't have to be myself, but someone like myself who understands both jurisdictions, is really important, do you ever get any massive aha moments from clients when you actually speak to them and they're like coming over to the uae or they're inquiring about it maybe they're selling a business.

Speaker 1:

What's the biggest sort of aha moment where they're like, oh my god, I didn't know that usually it's on them, you know, selling the business, and the realization that if they delay and wait they can pay no tax that there was someone again another actual, real life example.

Speaker 1:

It was a lady that was moving out here who had a business and she was saying to me, I'm going to sell my business, sell everything I've got in the uk to fund my move over to the uae her business.

Speaker 1:

She was going to pay tax in the region of two million pound by doing that, by selling it while she was uk resident. If she would have just moved to the UAE first and then sold it afterwards, she wouldn't have paid that £2 million essentially. So what I advise and it's very rare that I advise someone to get a loan, but my advice to her was look, the cost of you getting a loan to fund your move to the UAE and then paying that loan off after you've sold the assets you know, tax-free essentially is going to be much more beneficial than just moving. So that was, I guess, a big sort of aha moment for her because it ended up saving her a lot of money. But yeah, a lot of people don't realise that you can do things tax-free over here. Or, like I said, the tax return situation, the fact that, even though they're tax resident over here, they still have to file a UK tax return a lot of the time.

Speaker 2:

You know, a lot of the advisors in the in hoxton wealth um are working with financial advisors in the uk and those financial advisors are passing uh clients across that they can no longer help because they aren't licensed in the different jurisdictions. So when should they start talking to someone like you in that process? If their client is thinking about moving abroad, maybe selling a business? When should they start talking to someone like you in that process? If their client is thinking about moving abroad, maybe selling a business? When should that advisor really reach out to yourself to start to build a relationship and start to introduce clients to you? Because there'll be a lot of advisors who will be listening to this podcast who are thinking Dan sounds like he knows what he's talking about. I think the accountancy side, tax side and financial planning side is huge. I think it's such a massive skill set.

Speaker 1:

It's really, really clear and I think that gives a huge amount of financial planners in the uk comfort in knowing if they aren't passing their clients across to be looked after by you during that process, then it's going to be a value-add service realistically as soon as possible, obviously, if you know, if you have a client that says my plan is to move to the ua in 10 years and not that soon, um, but but within reason, say a year before they move or so, it still makes sense because the way the tax year runs you know it can be that you're not reporting for a tax year until sort of nine, ten months after that tax year is finished or that accounting year is finished. So there's a lot that you can do within a year of leaving that will make a significant difference in terms of their planning and their financial position. So I would say if you know that someone's planning on moving within a year or so, then you should absolutely reach out to someone like myself that can help with that move. It doesn't have to be that you know the client immediately moves over to me managing them and so that attend they would stay with the financial advisors or the accountants that I work with in the uk and until the day that they move um and we process a change after that. But the planning is.

Speaker 1:

The most important thing is that when you look at inheritance tax, if you speak to anyone in the tax world about inheritance tax in the UK, they will tell you that inheritance tax is a voluntary tax. Obviously it's not a voluntary tax. Hmrc say you have to pay it. You know you don't. You can say I decide not to pay it. What they mean by that is, the vast majority of inheritance tax issues can be removed if you plan effectively, whether it's gifting, whether it's setting up structures, whatever it may be, and it's the same with with moving to the uae or the jurisdictions from the uk.

Speaker 2:

If you plan, you can probably save you've been with hoxton for how long now? Four years, four years four years you've seen a lot of change happen, probably within the last four years, probably in the last year. It's absolutely rocket shipped. Yeah, what does the future hold for you here, and how do you feel about hoxton as a place to um work on your career? You?

Speaker 1:

know, my, my future is here. Um, I focus a lot on tax, I focus a lot on international financial planning and I have no no intention of moving or changing. Um, when it comes to Hoxton, you know, one of the biggest factors is probably Chris. You know, without trying to blow smoke, his ass.

Speaker 1:

I didn't want to say that, but yeah without trying to compliment him too much, there are certain people there are different people in the world that you meet and I've never met anyone who has who is as resilient as he is, and I think that is the for me. When you look at Chris, that's the. The primary reason for his success is resilience. I think he thrives on challenges. You know I think it was about 18 months ago, two years ago there was a big shift in in the way pensions work, pension transfers and you know, people moving their pensions, how, how difficult it was to do it and ultimately that's what hoxton had focused on initially. Um, and a lot of advisory firms at that point I think would have collapsed and you know the approach from him was to change maybe where we focus, change what we do. So so he's very resilient is what I would say about Chris.

Speaker 1:

So I have no doubt that Hoxton will still be around in a long time. I just don't see how he lets it fail. I know it's one person, but what he is doing now, what the company is doing now, what Hoxton or what we're doing as a company, is building out his sort of ethos throughout the company and making it more corporate to give it more structure, more rigid, I guess, which is really important when you are expanding. I think the big change that I've seen recently was the whole rebranding, and I think that was the catalyst for making the company more corporate in terms of having more structure. Yeah, so that's my theory on Hoxton. I don't think it's going anywhere.

Speaker 2:

No, that's cool, let's be really honest with the listeners as well.

Speaker 2:

If there's people thinking about coming out here to work as a financial advisor, okay, we won't talk about the trainee, wealth manager side or pathway side or power planning or whatever. Okay, that's pretty clear. It's a an employed role. You can earn some more money on top of it. You tend to have people coming out in those roles that are a bit younger, so they might be sharing houses and that typical type of thing. Okay, it is expensive living here. Yeah, what do you?

Speaker 2:

I'm I'm now saying to advisors okay, unless you've got a book of business in the uk, if you're coming out here just to start from scratch, it's going to be really, really hard and it's going to be quite expensive to live here. What? What do you think? What advice would you give to, you know, an advisor? What sort of level of income should they be thinking about when they come out here? Of what's realistic? You've got kids, I've got kids.

Speaker 2:

You know, I don't think someone should move out here with with no clients, for instance, right, I think it's a really foolish thing to do. I think you should come out here with something like I would even say, 10 million under management and they're your clients and getting an income from it, because it's going to set you up whilst you're out here, because there are costs to consider. Rent is quite high. Uh, cost of living can be quite high. I pay 15 000 pound a year in school fees. What do you think like? Am I on the right path here by being like that and being honest and open and saying, or what? What do you think to set a decent amount of what's the right type of person to come over here?

Speaker 1:

um, it'll sound like a an out and out tax answer. Now. It depends, yeah, um, the reason it depends is because it depends on the individual. You know, if, if, if I was coming out here 10 years ago, you know, or 15 years ago when I'd first sort of finished studying without a wife, without kids, then you can come out. If you look at the pathway package I know you said that, you know, ignoring that, but just to use that as an example you look at the salary element of that you can absolutely live on that out here as an individual. If you're coming out here with no clients and you're looking at the pathway package and you've got a wife and you've got children, you can't, you just can't. So it depends on the individual what their circumstances are. Again, though, there are.

Speaker 1:

You know there's this conception, or misconception as it may be, that to buy is really expensive but there are cheaper places to go. You don't have to shop in spinnies and wait shows. You know there you look at the uk, you can go to mns or you can go to aldi. Similar thing out here. You know you have spinnies and waitrose or you have viva. You know there are different types of shops out here where you can get things cheaper. Um, there are different areas that you can live where it's cheaper, so it's not necessarily the case that you absolutely need all of this money that some people will say you need, you don't. But it is in general a little bit more expensive.

Speaker 1:

So for me it depends whether you have a family or not. If you've got a family, I think you're probably right. You need to have a book before you come out here. Uh, if you are just coming out here, you're new to the industry, you know. Then you, you don't necessarily need to have a lot behind you because you can, as an individual, you can go and get you know a room. You just rent a room, sort of like being in an apartment in the uk. It doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg to do yeah, 100 I agree with you yeah, great stuff.

Speaker 2:

Well, dan, listen, thank you so much for sharing your hoxton life today. Um, giving us a great insight into your career, from accountancy to finance to now becoming a financial planner. The opportunities that are in the international space for financial planners as well, especially working with business owners that are now very much considering the UAE, dubai, to be a great place for them to move for those tax benefits. So explaining what those opportunities are and what people should really think about, I think will educate financial planners. But I think a few accountants might be listening to this and I think maybe a few clients might be listening to this and thinking do you know what dan sounds like? The man? He knows what he's talking about and I'm sure they'll sure they'll reach out. So thanks so much for sharing your hoxton life today, dan no problem, enjoyed being here, thank you cheers.