Thousands of Britons may be avoiding tax on properties in Dubai

Thousands of British citizens could be avoiding tax on their property investments in Dubai by failing to tell HM Revenue & Customs about their earnings, The Times can reveal.

Leaked property data shows that 17,000 British citizens owned about 22,000 properties in Dubai as of spring 2022. The owners of about 13,000 of the properties have rented them out at least once since then.

However, HMRC records for the 2021-22 tax year show that only 1,900 UK tax residents declared they were earning money from renting their properties across the whole of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to a freedom of information disclosure.

Andrew Park, a tax investigations partner at Price Bailey, said the scale of the disparity suggested that “large numbers of UK