Oman

No. The Oman Golden and Silver Residency programme has no physical presence requirement at all. That is a real point of difference against Qatar's reported 90-day expectation. The programme launched originally in 2021 and relaunched on 31 August 2025 through the Invest Oman platform. Permits are issued by the Royal Oman Police. It also covers dependent parents on both tiers, which many Gulf programmes do not. Presence-free residency that includes parents is the programme's real selling point.

The Golden tier requires OMR 500,000 (roughly USD 1.3m) in an LLC or public joint-stock company, in government bonds, or in property, for a 10-year renewable permit. There is also a job-creation variant, requiring a company that employs 50 or more Omani nationals, with no capital minimum. The Silver tier requires OMR 250,000 (roughly USD 650,000) in company investment or property, for five years. Application fees are OMR 551 for Golden and OMR 326 for Silver. Ignore the widely circulated claim of a single, unified OMR 200,000 threshold. That figure appears only in low-quality and AI-generated content. UNCTAD, Deloitte and Trowers & Hamlins all state 250k/500k.

Yes, this is enacted law, not a proposal. Royal Decree No. 56/2025, issued by HM Sultan Haitham bin Tarik on 22 June 2025 and published in the Official Gazette on 30 June 2025, introduces a 5% personal income tax from 1 January 2028 on annual income above OMR 42,000 (roughly USD 109,000), taxing only the excess. Oman is the first GCC state to enact a personal income tax, and the Tax Authority projects that 99% of the population will be unaffected. The 5% rate is arithmetically immaterial for a UHNW family, but it breaks the Gulf's zero-income-tax taboo. It sets a precedent for every other GCC state under fiscal pressure.

Nobody knows yet, and that unresolved question is the whole ballgame for a UHNW family. Whether Oman will tax worldwide income or only Omani-source income for tax residents has not yet been determined. The Executive Regulations, which will set the residence definition, the scope of taxable income and any foreign tax credits, were due within a year of publication, roughly 30 June 2026, and appear overdue. Planning without them is planning blind. Until the regulations are issued, the viability of Omani residency for a globally-diversified family cannot be assessed.

Yes. This mismatch is the single most important fact about Oman. A family onboarding today at OMR 500,000 is buying a 10-year permit into a jurisdiction that has already legislated to start taxing personal income in 2028. That is well before the permit expires, so the permit outlives the tax-free premise on which it is usually sold. The strategic lesson goes beyond Oman. Treat any assumption that a Gulf jurisdiction will never tax income as a policy choice, not a constitutional guarantee. Bahrain is already levying 15% DMTT, and Oman has now gone first on personal tax.

Yes. Expatriates aged 60 or over with OMR 4,000 per month in fixed income qualify for a five-year extended residence permit. It sits alongside the investment and property routes but requires no capital deployment, only the qualifying income. As with the main programme, it carries no physical presence obligation and is renewable.

Oman does not permit dual citizenship, and there is no realistic path from the residency programme to an Omani passport. The Golden and Silver permits are renewable 5 or 10-year residency only, with no route to permanent residency or naturalisation. The Omani passport ranks 58th on the Henley index and is not obtainable via the residency programme in any case. Treat Oman strictly as a residency option. Its tax premise is now on a 2028 clock.

There is no capital gains tax right now. How that changes from 2028 depends on Executive Regulations that have not yet been issued. There is no inheritance tax either. The 2028 personal income tax law goes further and expressly exempts inheritance, alongside deductions for education, healthcare, zakat, donations and primary housing. Oman also levies 5% VAT and taxes on a territorial basis. The detail behind those 2028 deductions and exemptions, though, still sits in regulations that have not been published.