Accountants for businesses in Dubai Media City
Dubai Media City is where our own office sits — Loft Offices Building 1 — in the middle of the TECOM cluster of agencies, production houses, publishers, event companies, tech firms and the creator economy that has grown up around them.
Dubai Media City is where our own office sits — Loft Offices Building 1 — in the middle of the TECOM cluster of agencies, production houses, publishers, event companies, tech firms and the creator economy that has grown up around them.
Media City businesses are almost all service businesses licensed under the Dubai Development Authority, and their accounting problems are the service-business set: retainers invoiced ahead of delivery, project revenue recognised across campaigns rather than on invoice date, work in progress that may never bill, and a working-capital cycle quietly financed by the agency while clients pay in sixty days. See professional services accounting.
The technical question that separates agencies here is media spend: whether the business reports billings passed through to platforms and publishers as its own revenue, or only its fee and commission. The principal-versus-agent analysis drives both the VAT treatment and a revenue line that can differ by a factor of ten — and it decides whether the AED 375,000 VAT threshold and the AED 3 million Small Business Relief ceiling are measured against fees or against gross billings. Getting it wrong in either direction is expensive.
The Corporate Tax position needs the same care as any free zone cluster: DDA free zone entities may be free zone persons, but the 0% rate only attaches to qualifying income earned with adequate substance — and a Media City agency serving mainland UAE brands is frequently outside it. We test the position rather than assume it. See free zone accounting.
We are based here, so this is the one part of Dubai where the first conversation can simply be a coffee. Contact us — 206, Level 2, Entrance B, Loft Offices Building 1.
What we do
- Monthly bookkeeping and bank reconciliation, closed on a fixed date.
- VAT registration and returns reconciled to your ledger.
- Corporate Tax registration, computation and filing, with the elections modelled.
- Payroll and WPS, including end-of-service provisioning.
- Financial statements and audit support, with an independent registered auditor appointed where one is required.
- Management accounts — the monthly pack that tells you what is actually happening.
Reviewed 18 August 2026 by Ahmed Nabil Selim. UAE tax rates, thresholds and deadlines change — confirm the position for your period before relying on it.
Dubai Media City — frequently asked questions
Only if you are acting as principal — controlling the media inventory before it is passed to the client, carrying inventory risk, and setting the price. An agency that buys as the client's agent reports its fee and commission as revenue, with the media spend flowing through a disbursement account rather than the P&L. The distinction changes the revenue line by the size of the media budget, drives the VAT treatment of the recharge, and determines whether thresholds such as VAT registration and Small Business Relief are tested against fees or gross billings. It turns on the contracts, so we read them rather than defaulting to whichever answer looks better.
Often at 0% rather than 5%, but the conditions matter. Export of services can be zero-rated where the recipient has no UAE presence and is outside the UAE when the service is performed, among other conditions — but a campaign delivered for an overseas brand's UAE launch, or work benefiting a UAE establishment of the client, can pull the supply back to 5%. Zero-rating is a position you must be able to evidence, not a default for any invoice addressed abroad, and it is one of the most common corrections we make in agency VAT returns.
Yes — our office is at 206, Level 2, Entrance B, Loft Offices Building 1, Dubai Media City, and for Media City and TECOM businesses the first conversation is as easy as walking over. Twenty minutes, free, no obligation; bring your licence type, a sense of monthly transaction volume and how far behind the books are, and you will leave with a straight answer and a fixed quote to follow.
Yes. We act for clients across all seven emirates and in every major free zone; the location pages cover the areas we are asked about most, not the limits of where we work. Cloud accounting makes physical proximity largely irrelevant — what matters is knowledge of the UAE regime and of your sector.
Based in Dubai Media City?
Tell us the licence type, roughly how many transactions a month and where things stand. We will scope the work and quote a fixed monthly fee.
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