Saudi Arabia to enforce 2024 regional HQ deadline  

• Law implemented ‘without delay’
• Tax framework agreed
• 80 companies granted licences

The January 2024 deadline for global companies to move their regional headquarters to Saudi Arabia will be implemented without delay as scheduled, the kingdom’s finance minister has confirmed.

Saudi Arabia announced in February 2021 that it will no longer sign contracts with foreign companies that do not have a regional headquarters in the country before January 1, 2024.  

“The deadline is not new, and yes, it will be implemented,” finance minister Mohammed Al Jadaan told Reuters, speaking on the sidelines of the seventh Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh.

• More companies set up Saudi HQs as deadline nears
• Saudi Arabia to offer ‘tax relief’ to firms relocating regional HQs
• Riyadh to host first GCC-Asean investment summit

Although companies are concerned over the regulatory framework, including taxation, Al Jadaan clarified that a tax framework had been agreed. The minister did not give any further details.

Saudi investment minister Khalid Al-Falih in March told the Financial Times that Saudi Arabia is likely to offer tax relief to multinationals that relocate their regional headquarters to the kingdom in 2023.

“It is business as usual for them in Saudi Arabia and outside Saudi Arabia,” he told the newspaper.

The guiding principle is that the regional HQ special purpose vehicle, which will be created in Saudi Arabia, will be only taxed for the limited — almost nothing — profits they make within the regional HQ, Al Falih said.

As many as 80 companies had been granted licences by March 2023 to move their regional headquarters to the kingdom, with many expected to be based in King Abdullah Financial District.