Oct 16, 2008
Duty free refers to items that can be bought without paying customs duties on, in the UAE its any anything that you can purchase in any of the Free zones, as they have not had any duties attached to them. The crunch comes when you remove them from the Freezone in which they were purchased, and then the 5% import duty is levied before you can remove the goods. The only notable exception to this is “Duty Free” at the airport, the downside is that you cannot simply walk in and do your shopping there; you have to have an air ticket or be transiting through the duty-free area. Airport duty-free is normally also luxury items.
In general the import tariff for goods into the UAE is only 5%, this means that with normal retailer mark-up the goods are generally cheaper than in other countries where they have high import duties and then retailer mark-up; this is of course a generalization and not a rule.
- dbxsoul
- Honored Member
-
- Posts: 1626
- Location: Dubai