The National’s piece, by Katy Gillett, gathered the set-up prices in one place. Dynamic Freelancer, a licensed set-up provider, quotes a professional services permit at Dh6,500 plus VAT for someone already on a sponsored visa. Its complete package is Dh14,888: permit Dh11,500, municipality fee Dh350, unemployment insurance Dh350 and medical insurance at Dh1,500 plus VAT. Invoicing through the company then costs 2.49 per cent of each invoice. The Dubai Development Authority’s GoFreelance permit has a base fee of Dh7,500, with first-year totals including a visa typically between Dh15,000 and Dh18,000. A Sharjah Media City trade licence starts at Dh5,760; a DMCC flexi-desk package runs to Dh43,780.

Those are the numbers people compare. I want to do the other column, because the salaried side of this trade is the one I live on.

What a UAE salary pays for that never appears on the slip

At the trading company where I work, I see the finance team book costs for each employee that the employee never sees. A freelancer has to fund every one of them personally, and the labour law is specific about two.

Gratuity first. Article 51 of Federal Decree-Law 33 of 2021 says a full-time foreign worker with a year or more of service is entitled to end of service benefits “calculated according to the basic wage” at “a wage of (21) twenty-one days for each year of the first five years of service” and “(30) thirty days for each year exceeding such period”. Take a Dh15,000 salary with a Dh9,000 basic, a common 60/40 split. The accrual is 9,000 × 21 ÷ 30 = Dh6,300 a year. It does not land in the account, but it is earned, it is payable at exit, and it stops the day the employment ends.

Leave second. Article 29 gives “an annual leave with full wage, of not less than: thirty days for each year of extended service”. Thirty calendar days is about 22 working days that the salary pays for and the freelancer does not. Public holidays sit on top.

Health insurance third. The article lists it among the costs that move from employer to individual, and quotes Toshita Chauhan of Policybazaar.ae: most mid-tier individual plans are between Dh3,000 and Dh7,000 a year, with the full range running from Dh1,000 to more than Dh20,000. The Dh1,500 medical plan inside the Dh14,888 package is the floor, not the equivalent of an employer’s group plan. I will use Dh5,000 and treat Dh3,500 of it as a top-up on the package.

The worked example: replacing Dh15,000 a month

Salary to replace: 15,000 × 12 = Dh180,000.

Costs the salary used to carry:

Total: Dh24,688. Revenue needed before fees: Dh204,688. If the invoices run through the provider at 2.49 per cent, the gross has to be 204,688 ÷ 0.9751 = Dh209,915, of which Dh5,227 is the processing fee. Call it Dh17,500 a month of invoices to stand exactly where the Dh15,000 salary stood, which is 16.6 per cent more than the salary before a single unpaid day.

Now the days. A salaried year is 52 weeks × 5 = 260 working days, 22 of them on leave, so the salary is really priced at 180,000 ÷ 260 = Dh692 per working day for 238 days of work. The freelancer bills only days worked: 209,915 ÷ 238 = Dh882 a day, 27 per cent above the salary’s implied rate, and that assumes every one of the 238 days finds a client. Bill 200 days, which is a realistic year with gaps between projects, and the rate has to be Dh1,050. Public holidays and sick days come out of the same 238.

A salary is a price for 260 days, 22 of them not worked. An invoice is a price for the days that were.

This is not an argument against freelancing. It is the reason the article’s advisers are so careful. Shazia Bharuchi’s advice was to save “at least six months of essential living expenses” before resigning and to “budget based on your lowest-earning months … not your best ones”. The day-rate arithmetic is why the lowest month, not the average, is the planning number.

The cost that is not a cost: when the invoice actually pays

The line in the piece I recognised most was Keren Bobker’s: “You never know if you will have delays with your clients settling invoices, a far too common occurrence.”

The receivables ledger at the trading company where I work is a calendar of that. Invoices go out on 30- or 60-day terms, and a 60-day invoice dated 30 September is due at the end of November. Some customers pay in December. Nobody there considers that a crisis; it is what terms mean. A freelancer is a supplier, so the same calendar applies to a person: September’s work becomes November’s cash, and the first two or three months after resigning run on savings by design, not by accident. That is a working-capital requirement, and it sits on top of the six-month buffer, not inside it. In Masrofna I would book each invoice as expected income on its due date, not the day it was sent, so the month shows what was earned against what has actually arrived.

The last mechanic is credit. Ms Bobker’s point is that once self-employed “it is harder to obtain credit”, and for a mortgage “lenders will usually require three years of audited accounts”. The salary certificate that a bank accepts in a week disappears with the job; the substitute takes three financial years to build.

So the permit price is real, and Dh14,888 is a fair place to start the spreadsheet. It is just the smallest of the four numbers. The other three are the gratuity that stops accruing, the leave and insurance the employer stops funding, and the 60 days between the work and the money. Anyone pricing the switch should put their own basic salary, their own insurance quote and their own clients’ payment terms into the same three lines and see what day rate comes out.