Ras Al-Khair SEZ and Riyadh’s Logistics Zone Run on Different Clocks

FTZ News: Saudi Arabia did not put a 2-year tax holiday on Ras Al-Khair or on the logistics park by Riyadh’s airport. The industrial zones were sold a 5% corporate rate that can run 20 years. The airport zone was sold a 0% rate that can run 50 years.

The reconstruction here follows ECZA’s public zone pages, Cabinet Decision 468 in Umm Al-Qura on Jan. 16, KPMG’s write-ups of those frameworks and of the substance rules ZATCA posted Aug. 7, and the tax authority’s May booklet on the Special Integrated Logistics Zone.

King Abdullah Economic City sits on the Red Sea. Ras Al-Khair sits on the Gulf. Jazan is down the southwestern coast. Cloud computing is a license that does not need 1 fence. The gazette gave 90 days after mid-January. April 16 is when the new books opened.

ECZA’s pamphlets still open with that 5%, set against the 20% many foreign-owned firms pay on the mainland. They also list no withholding tax on profits sent abroad, customs duty deferred on goods that stay inside, and 0% VAT on some inbound loads and on loads that move zone to zone. Licensed companies are left out of zakat. August is when Riyadh tightened the other end. From the 1st year of licensed work the rooms, the payroll and the bills are supposed to be in the zone. Marketing intellectual property on its own does not get the fat exemptions.

Ras Al-Khair is about 20 square kilometers and about 100 kilometers from Jubail. The work is ships, rigs and repair. Jubail and Yanbu’s royal commission still handles the dirt and the utilities. ECZA handles the license and the tax treatment. A yard talks to both.

The Riyadh logistics site is next to the air-cargo complex and is not one of those 4. The May booklet sets qualifying income at 0% until 50 years are gone or the license is gone. Treat it as a 5th address. Do not run it on the industrial clock.

Older sales sheets mention 5 years of relief on some expatriate labor fees. That is a staffing cost. It is not the corporate rate, and it is the likeliest place a “2-year” line got scrambled out of “20.”

Vision 2030 is the reason the Cabinet signed the January package: work that does not wait on a tanker. The same rules ease a few company-law and trade-name formalities inside the 4 zones. They do not, by themselves, fill a dry dock or a warehouse.

April turned on the 20-year, 5% offer for the 4 ECZA zones. Ras Al-Khair is in that group. Riyadh logistics keeps the 50-year 0% on the activities its own license covers./.