- There is no single consultancy licence. It is a family of activities, and each is treated differently.
- Advisory work is usually an ordinary professional licence. Management, marketing, IT and strategy advice all fall in this group.
- Some fields are regulated. Legal, medical or financial advice needs a qualification or approval first.
Consultancy licence or professional licence?
Management and financial consultancies share a name, yet sit in different places for licensing. The precise advice you give, and who your clients are, decide which activities go on the licence.
What founders assume
Consultancy is one generic licence, so I can pick the activities loosely and sort the details later.
What is true in practice
The activities decide what a bank will open for, what a client can sign with you, and what the regulator sees. Choosing them is the core of the work.
Where does your consultancy sit?
Most consultancies
An ordinary professional licence
The category for knowledge-based services, where you provide expertise rather than trade in goods.
- Management, strategy, marketing, IT and general business advisory
- Widely issued on the mainland and in free zones
Fixing a mis-scoped consultancy licence later
If the activities do not cover your advice, a bank can decline or close the account and a client or tender can reject the licence. Where the right activity sits under a different regulator, the fix can mean re-issuing the licence and redoing what was tied to it.
Paid twice Correcting a mis-scoped licence often costs more than the original setup. In a regulated field, holding out as approved when you are not is more serious still.
A free zone consultancy is not automatically at 0%
Corporate tax applies at 9% above AED 375,000 of taxable income, and the free zone 0% rate holds only while every qualifying condition is met. Consultancy income from mainland clients usually does not qualify, so tax and substance are part of the same conversation.
How we classify a consultancy
Start from the advice you give
We start here because everything downstream is built on a precise description of the advice you give.
Classify against the current activity lists
We confirm whether it is an ordinary professional licence or whether any part is a regulated profession needing a qualification or sector approval.
Tell you plainly where you stand
Where it is straightforward, we say so. If any part touches a regulated field, we name the authority involved and explain what its approval changes about the setup.
Filing the licence
We word the activities and file the licence once the classification is settled.
