Regional Headquarters setup in Saudi Arabia

What began as a procurement condition has become one of the most consequential structuring decisions a group operating in the region will make: a 30-year tax incentive on one side, real substance obligations on the other. We design the entity around what MISA licenses and what ZATCA later audits, not around the headline rate.

Who this is for

• Multinational groups that sell to, or intend to sell to, Saudi government bodies and state-owned entities.
• Groups servicing the Saudi market from Dubai, Bahrain, or elsewhere that now need in-Kingdom presence to stay eligible for public contracts.
• Companies weighing whether an RHQ is the right vehicle at all — or whether a lighter structure or a hub in another GCC state serves them better.

If you are not sure which of these describes you, that is itself the first thing worth advising on. We do not sell RHQs to companies that do not need one.

What we do

• Eligibility and threshold assessment — whether your group meets MISA's definition of a qualifying multinational, and whether the RHQ route makes commercial sense before you commit.
• MISA RHQ licensing — application, activity scoping, and coordination through to the licence.
• Entity setup and commercial registration — incorporation, CR, and the full post-licensing sequence.
• Substance design — office, headcount, senior-executive and board arrangements structured to meet ZATCA's economic substance requirements from day one.
• Tax positioning — mapping eligible RHQ income against operating income, transfer pricing alignment, and, where appropriate, a formal ruling from ZATCA.
• Workforce and mobility — visas, Iqama, and the Saudization position for RHQ staff.
• Ongoing compliance — annual filings, transfer pricing documentation, and the audit trail the incentive depends on.

How we work

Our advantage is that we operate across Bahrain, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, so our first answer is not automatically “set up in Riyadh.” We assess whether the RHQ is warranted, structure it to hold up under audit, and stay with the file through the compliance obligations that follow — because the tax relief is only as durable as the substance behind it.