Rent is the headline. Occupancy is the number
Base rent, turnover rent, service charge, marketing levy, chiller, storage, deposits and guarantees — arriving on different invoices from different departments, and almost never added up as one percentage of sales.
Rent is the headline, but occupancy cost is the number that decides whether a store survives. Between them sit half a dozen charges that arrive on different invoices, on different cycles, from different parts of the landlord's organisation — and most tenants have never seen them added up as a single percentage of sales.
What you are actually paying to be in the mall
| Charge | Typical basis | Accounting treatment |
|---|---|---|
| Base rent | Fixed, per sq ft or per annum | Fixed lease payment — into the IFRS 16 liability |
| Turnover rent | % of sales above a breakpoint | Variable — expensed as the sales occur, outside the liability |
| Service charge | Per sq ft, for common area upkeep | Usually an operating expense; check whether it is a lease component |
| Marketing / promotion levy | % of rent or per sq ft | Operating expense |
| Chiller & utilities | Consumption or apportioned | Operating expense |
| Storage & back-of-house | Per sq ft | Usually a separate lease or licence |
| Security deposit / bank guarantee | Multiple of monthly rent | Asset — a receivable, not an expense; recover it at exit |
| Fit-out deposit | Fixed, refundable | Asset — frequently forgotten and never reclaimed |
IFRS 16, in the version that matters to a tenant
Your mall lease almost certainly goes on the balance sheet. The fixed payments across the term, reduced by any rent-free incentive, are discounted to a lease liability with a matching right-of-use asset depreciated over the term. Turnover rent stays off it and is expensed as incurred. Service charges and utilities are non-lease components and are generally expensed — though a lease that bundles them without separating the amounts requires a judgement, and there is a practical expedient allowing non-lease components to be combined with the lease component if you elect it.
The consequences are real: capitalising a mall lease moves rent out of operating expenses and into depreciation and interest, which raises EBITDA, adds a liability to the balance sheet and changes every covenant and multiple calculated from those figures. Retailers being valued, sold or financed should understand this before the buyer's accountant explains it to them.
First, the service charge reconciliation — many leases give tenants a right to the landlord's statement, and errors in apportionment are not rare. Second, your deposits and guarantees register: across a portfolio of stores opened over several years, unrecovered fit-out deposits and expired guarantees still being paid for are common and quietly expensive.
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.
Mall lease costs — frequently asked questions
It varies widely by category and mall, and any single benchmark is misleading — a jewellery unit, a fashion store and a food-court counter operate at genuinely different sustainable ratios. What is universal is the discipline: calculate total occupancy cost including base rent, turnover rent, service charge, marketing levy, utilities and storage, express it as a percentage of net sales, and track it per store over time. A ratio that climbs while sales are flat is the earliest reliable signal that a lease has stopped working.
Generally yes, unless it qualifies for the short-term exemption (twelve months or less, no purchase option) or the low-value asset exemption, neither of which usually applies to a retail unit. The fixed payments are discounted to a lease liability with a corresponding right-of-use asset. The effect on reported EBITDA is significant, because rent leaves operating expenses and reappears as depreciation and interest.
That depends on your lease, and it is a legal question as much as an accounting one. Many leases entitle the tenant to a statement of the service charge expenditure and its apportionment, and reviewing it is worthwhile — apportionment errors, costs outside the permitted categories and capital works recharged as operating expenditure all occur. We can review the statement and quantify the exposure; where it becomes a dispute about the lease itself, it goes to Neo Legal.
Want this handled properly?
Tell us how your store trades — the mall, the lease, the payment channels. We will scope the work and quote a fixed monthly fee.
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