UAE salary calculator

The UAE levies no personal income tax on salaries, and expatriate employees pay no social-security contributions either. For the vast majority of the workforce, the number on the offer letter is the number that lands in the bank. The 5% VAT applies to what you spend, and the 9% corporate tax applies to company profits — neither touches your payslip.

So why use a salary calculator at all? Because three things still separate two identical gross offers: how the package is split between basic salary and allowances, what your employer pays on top of your salary, and what you quietly accrue in end-of-service benefits. Those are the numbers this page puts in front of you.

Emirati employees are enrolled in the GPSSA pension scheme rather than gratuity. Under the long-standing rules of Federal Law No. 7 of 1999 — which continue to apply to Emiratis whose first employment started before 31 October 2023 — the employee contributes 5% of the contribution-account salary and a private-sector employer contributes 12.5%, with the government topping the scheme up by a further 2.5%. The contribution salary in the private sector is the contractual salary (basic plus allowances), capped at AED 50,000 per month.

Emiratis who entered the workforce on or after 31 October 2023 fall under Federal Decree-Law No. 57 of 2023 instead: the employee share rises to 11% and the employer share to 15% (26% in total), on a contribution salary capped at AED 70,000 in the private sector, with government support for part of the employer share at lower salary levels. GCC nationals working in the UAE contribute to their home country's scheme at that scheme's rates.

Because expats have no pension deduction, the end-of-service gratuity is the closest thing to one — except your employer bears all of it. Under Article 51 of Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 you earn 21 calendar days of basic wage per year of service for the first five years and 30 days per year after that, with the daily wage defined as monthly basic divided by 30.

That means a basic salary of AED 15,000 quietly accrues AED 10,500 of gratuity per year (15,000 ÷ 30 × 21) during your first five years — AED 875 a month that is part of your real compensation. This calculator shows that accrual using exactly the same formula as our UAE gratuity calculator.

Two employees can take home the same AED 25,000 a month and leave the country years later with very different cheques. Gratuity accrues on basic salary only — housing, transport and other allowances are excluded. A package written as 12,000 basic + 13,000 allowances accrues roughly half the gratuity of one written as 25,000 basic.

UAE offers commonly put 50–60% of the package in basic salary, but the split is negotiable and rarely discussed. Before you sign, run both versions of your offer through this page and the gratuity calculator — for a national, the same split also decides the pension base.

If your employment is registered in the DIFC, the accrued-gratuity model doesn't apply: since February 2020 employers pay into DEWS, a funded workplace-savings plan, at 5.83% of basic salary monthly, rising to 8.33% once you pass five years of service. ADGM operates a comparable regime. The money is invested in your name and travels with you when you leave.

The economics are close to the federal 21/30-day formula, but the risk profile is different — DEWS is funded monthly and ring-fenced from your employer, while mainland gratuity is an unfunded promise paid at the end. Factor that into how you compare offers across jurisdictions.

For a national, the employer adds 12.5–15% of the contribution salary in pension on top of gross pay. For an expat, the employer accrues gratuity (about 5.8% of basic during the first five years) and must also cover mandatory medical insurance, and typically visa costs and flight allowances. Total cost of employment usually runs well above the advertised salary.

Understanding that gap is useful leverage: an employer comparing two structures may happily move dirhams from allowances into basic — it costs them little for a national's cap-limited pension, and it materially improves your gratuity as an expat.

Zero income tax does not automatically mean high savings. Housing commonly absorbs 25–40% of a Dubai or Abu Dhabi package, school fees are private, and lifestyle inflation is the local sport. The number that actually builds wealth is not gross salary but the share of it you keep and invest each month.

A useful discipline is to treat your gratuity or DEWS accrual as the floor of your savings rate, not the whole of it, and to track net worth — cash, investments, property, end-of-service accruals — in one place across currencies. That is precisely what NOVOX is built for.