A portfolio tracker for investors resident in the UAE

Why tracking is different from here

Most portfolio trackers are built for someone who lives, earns, invests and eventually retires inside one tax system. Very little about a UAE portfolio matches that description.

• No income tax at home, and no treaty abroad. The UAE does not tax personal investment income, so the second tax step — tax where you live — is usually not the problem. The first step is: there is no US–UAE income tax treaty, so the IRS treaty table gives a UAE resident 30% on portfolio dividends from US-domiciled funds and US stocks. That is the highest rate on the table, applied to the whole distribution.
• Nothing to reclaim it against. In a country that taxes dividends, withholding at source is often absorbed by a credit at home. With no tax at home there is nothing for the credit to reduce. The 30% is final.
• No US estate tax treaty. US-situs assets above USD 60,000 can expose a non-resident, non-citizen estate to US estate tax at rates reaching 40% on the excess, and the relief some residences rely on is not available here.
• The residence is often temporary. A portfolio built over five tax-free years is frequently carried into a country that taxes dividends, taxes gains, or taxes accumulating funds on a deemed basis. Which means the right question is rarely "what does this cost me now" but "what will this structure cost the version of me that leaves".

The per-residence detail — the rate, the paperwork it depends on, the estate position — is on the UAE withholding page.

The domicile decision matters more here than almost anywhere

For a UAE resident the gap between wrappers is at its widest. A US-domiciled world fund hands over 30% of every distribution. An Irish-domiciled UCITS holding the same companies suffers 15% inside the fund on its US-sourced dividends, and Ireland withholds nothing further from a non-resident. On a $200,000 portfolio yielding 1.7% gross, that is roughly $1,000 a year of difference on the same underlying index — against a wrapper fee gap usually measured in tens of dollars.

It still is not automatic: the saving scales with dividend yield, while a UCITS wrapper's higher ongoing charge is levied on your entire position. On a low-yield holding the arithmetic can come out the other way. The full comparison, and the same thing with two real tickers.

BorderFolio shows this on your actual holdings rather than in the abstract: each fund's real domicile, against the residence you configure, on the dividends your portfolio actually paid.

Currency: the peg helps, until you leave

The dirham is pegged to the US dollar, which removes a problem most international investors have: a USD portfolio and AED spending do not drift apart. What the peg does not fix is the currency you will eventually spend in. If the plan ends in sterling, euro, rupee or rand, your portfolio's dollar performance is only half of the story, and the other half is not visible anywhere in your brokerage account.

BorderFolio holds a portfolio in one base currency and converts transactions at the rate on the day they happened, not at today's rate. A contribution keeps the size it had when you made it, and any subsequent currency move shows up as market movement rather than quietly inflating your history of deposits. That distinction is what stops a currency swing from being mistaken for saving harder.

What it does with your statements

Upload the statement your broker already produces — IBKR Activity Statement, Saxo report, a local broker's PDF, a CSV export, or a screenshot of a mobile app. Positions, purchases, dividends and stated commissions are extracted and shown for review; nothing enters the portfolio until you confirm it. No UAE broker is connected, and there is no API key or login to hand over. The only broker anywhere in the product that can be connected directly is Freedom24 — optional, and read-only API keys you generate in the broker's own cabinet rather than a password. And if you'd rather not upload a statement at all, positions can be picked manually — same portfolio, no document involved. How import works.

What you get out of it:

• Contributions separated from market growth — how much of the balance is money you put in, as a running figure. The method.
• Both tax steps estimated per instrument, from fund domicile against your configured residence — including what changes if that residence changes.
• A US-situs reference threshold you can actually see yourself approaching, rather than crossing silently.
• Contribution rhythm — pace, streak and gaps — which for a saver on an expat contract is usually the number that predicts the outcome.

If you were sold a long-term savings plan

Insurance-wrapped savings plans with multi-year contribution commitments are marketed heavily to expatriates in the Gulf, and their defining feature is that the charge structure is nearly impossible to see from the statement. A tracker that separates what you have contributed from what the market has done will not get you out of a contract, but it does answer the question those statements avoid: after everything, how much of this is my own money, and how much did the market actually add?

That is the same arithmetic the product applies to a brokerage account, and there is nothing special about the wrapper — a statement is a statement.

Limits, plainly

• Not tax advice. Every figure is an informational estimate on your own holdings, with assumptions shown. BorderFolio is not a broker, adviser or tax adviser. See the disclaimer.
• Treaty and rate data comes from a published table — the IRS treaty table — not from your account, and what your broker actually withheld can differ, most often over documentation.
• The UAE second step is not modelled as a rate, and no page here states one for you. Your position is your own.
• Individual bonds and treasuries are not imported yet; funds holding them are.

Common questions

How much US withholding tax does a UAE resident pay on US dividends?

30%. There is no US–UAE income tax treaty, so the IRS treaty table applies the statutory rate to portfolio dividends from US-domiciled funds and US stocks. Because the UAE does not tax personal investment income, there is no tax at home for a foreign tax credit to reduce, which makes the 30% final rather than recoverable.

Are Irish-domiciled ETFs better for UAE residents?

On withholding alone they usually are: an Irish UCITS suffers 15% inside the fund on its US-sourced dividends and Ireland withholds nothing further from non-residents, against 30% taken from the whole distribution of a US-domiciled fund. The saving scales with dividend yield while the UCITS wrapper is usually slightly more expensive on the entire position, so it should be checked per holding rather than applied as a rule.

Does US estate tax affect UAE residents holding US ETFs?

There is no US–UAE estate tax treaty, so US-situs assets — including US-domiciled ETFs and US stocks — above USD 60,000 can expose a non-resident, non-citizen estate to US estate tax at rates reaching 40% on the excess. Irish-domiciled UCITS are not US-situs assets for this purpose.

Does BorderFolio connect to a UAE broker?

No — no UAE broker connects. You upload the statement your broker already produces — PDF, CSV, plain text or a screenshot — and the holdings and transactions are extracted for your review. No password is ever requested, and nothing in the product can trade or move money. The only broker anywhere in the product that can be connected directly is Freedom24 — optional, and read-only API keys you generate in the broker's own cabinet rather than a password.