[616c]

Some friends and I have been discussing this. There is a current regime in the UAE (not just Dubai) that has established a free trade zone that costs approximately several thousand USD to incorporate and set up shop, including basement prices for established visa(s) for you and a small group of employees.

I have received an email. If I have time later I will dig around to find the link to an official website from UAE commercial authorities.

Beware though, the GCC is notorious for renegging any niceness when you cause them unniceties.

[walterbell]

Some zones can be as small as an office park, with different rules for each zone, e.g. medical companies vs. software companies.

The Middle East in general has Internet firewalls, e.g. VOIP is often packet filtered. Might be worth checking on those policies within the zone.

Some tax-free jurisdictions generate money from bureacracy and fees, which impose substantial time overhead, since penalties for noncompliance can be.. unexpected.

[616c]

As I said, there is a lot of risk and questionable reward.

Down the street in Qatar, they routinely have Enterprenuer This and That coneferences and contests for recent college grads. I would love to see well-wishers and gov't officials face scrutiny in the form of super obvious questions regard bureaucracy and self-censorship as you described above which are hilarious.

Again, I am still not sure if I see the value. I think about it daily.

[ameen]

I've heard that the Internet isn't filtered in such zones, again I'm not so sure though.

What're the other alternatives and how does this compare to SG/HK?