Oman Golden Visa

The instrument sets no investment threshold at all, and that must be said plainly because every rial figure inside it is a fee rather than capital — read quickly, the two very different kinds of money merge.

The provision that creates the route defines it by a certificate rather than by an amount. Article 1 replaces item 9 of Article 10 of the Executive Regulation of the Foreigners' Residence Law.

The new item 9 reads that the investor visa is granted to a foreigner who wishes to invest their money in the country, on the basis of a certificate issued by the competent authority confirming that, the visa to be used within one year of issue.

The investment level therefore lives in the certifying authority's own criteria, not in this police instrument.

The figures the text does print sit in Articles 4 and 5 under the heading fees payable in Omani rials, and they are small: a ten-year investor visa 500 rials, a five-year investor visa 300 rials; residence renewal fees likewise 500 and 300 rials but on a cycle of every three years.

Article 7 adds two lines for accompanying persons: a ten-year join-the-investor visa 100 rials, a five-year one 50 rials, with renewal fees of 100 and 50 rials every three years.

No threshold was missed: the text does not print the figure 250,000 or any sum in millions, and every mention of the rial sits inside the fee tables.

Anyone needing the capital figure must open the certifying investment authority's own sources rather than this instrument — and any capital level attributed to this route while citing this document is citing the wrong place.

The capital levels sit in the Golden Residency programme launched on 31 August 2025: according to UNCTAD's record, citing the Oman News Agency, the five-year card requires at least OMR 250,000 and the ten-year card at least OMR 500,000, or a company employing at least 50 Omani nationals.

What is granted first is not residence but a visa, and moving from visa to residence is a separate step in the authority's gift.

Article 1 of Royal Oman Police Decision No. 234/2021 rewrites item 9 of Article 10 in the Executive Regulation of the Foreigners' Residence Law.

Under it, an investor visa is granted to a foreigner wishing to invest their funds in the country, the condition being a certificate issued by the competent authority attesting to that. The door opens on a state certificate rather than on any sum written into the regulation.

The penultimate paragraph of the same article is where matters are decided: the competent authority may convert the visas provided for in this article into any type of visa followed by residence if its conditions are met, according to controls that the same authority sets, and after payment of the prescribed fee.

The words “may”, “according to controls the authority sets” and “after payment” sit together in one sentence, making this a conditional discretion rather than an automatic step.

On duration, the decision's own fee schedule shows the regime running on two tracks, ten years and five years, for both visa and residence.

Family members travel on a separate stream with a name of its own — the visa and residence for “joining an investor” — available to the investor's spouse and to first-degree relatives, granted on the investor's request and under that person's responsibility.

The decision sets no deadline for the authority, but sets three clocks for the applicant, and all three are self-cancelling if missed. The first, item 9 of Article 10: the investor visa must be used within one year of its date of issue — lapse it and it is gone, certificate from the competent authority notwithstanding.

The second, item 5(d) of Article 10 as inserted by Article 6 of the decision: the multiple-trip visa for a person wishing to invest is valid for not more than one year, extendable for a similar period but subject to the competent authority's approval, so the extension is not automatic.

The third sits inside that same multiple-trip visa: it entitles the holder to enter and remain for not more than three months each time, so total time in a year depends on how often one comes and goes rather than on any continuous allowance.

On the state's side there is no figure at all: the decision states no time limit for assessing an application, none for issuing the competent authority's certificate, and none for converting a visa into residence.

The single state-side date is the decision's own commencement: issued 21 October 2021, published in Official Gazette No. 1413 of 24 October 2021, and in force from the day following publication.

There is no minimum number of days of presence, but there is a maintenance condition harsher than any day count, and it reaches the whole family.

Article 3 of the decision replaces the last paragraph of Article 26 of the Executive Regulation:

The residence of a foreigner who owns a property unit in an integrated tourism complex ends when that person disposes of the unit by any legal act transferring ownership — and the next clause states the consequence outright: the residence of the wife, the children and accompanying relatives ends consequently.

Residence here is therefore anchored not to presence but to ownership, and selling the property terminates the whole household's residence without any separate revocation decision.

The same provision grants an exemption running the other way: holders of a residence for joining an investor and of a residence for joining an owner are exempted from the age condition, according to controls set by the Director General — an unusual relief, since most routes gate family members by age.

On the multiple-trip branch the limit is counted per journey instead: not more than three months on each entry.

Decision No. 234 of 2021 of the Royal Oman Police, amending the executive regulation of the Foreigners Residence Law, issued on 21 October 2021 and published in gazette No. 1413, admits two groups.

They are the spouse of the foreign investor, and that person first-degree relatives, meaning parents and children, on the investor application and under the investor responsibility, in accordance with the controls set by the competent authority.

Article 19(3)(b) uses the same formula for the residence permit and creates a distinct class called investor-accompanying residence.

Article 10(5)(d) allows the multiple-entry visa of a person intending to invest to be issued also to the spouse and children, valid for no more than one year, renewable for the same, with each stay not exceeding three months.

A per-head fee does exist and is many times cheaper than the principal, under article 29:

The investor-accompanying visa costs 100 Omani rials for the ten-year class and 50 rials for the five-year class, and renewal of the accompanying residence costs 100 rials per three years for the ten-year class and 50 rials per three years for the five-year class, against 500 and 300 rials for the principal.

The most recent text, Decision No. 87 of 2026 issued on 21 June 2026 in gazette No. 1653, adds two things.

First, holders of investor-accompanying and owner-accompanying residence are exempt from the age condition under controls set by the Director General.

Second, where the foreigner transfers ownership of the unit by any legal act transferring title, that person residence ends and the residence of the accompanying spouse and relatives ends with it.

The instrument states no financial dependency test.

The status this programme grants, whether a visa or a residence permit, does not replace the holder's passport. The holder still travels on the passport of their own country, so the figure below belongs to the Oman passport and becomes the holder's only once they are issued a Oman passport.

According to the Passport Index of Prosperous Intelligence, on data dated 30 September 2026, the Oman passport reaches 88 destinations without applying for a consular visa in advance. The figure combines three forms of entry and does not count an e-Visa that must be obtained beforehand:

It is therefore a measure of how easily the holder travels, not a count of visa-free countries in the narrow sense.

For comparison, on the same source and the same method of counting, the Vietnamese passport reaches 44 destinations. The two lists of destinations do not nest inside one another, so the difference is an indication rather than a list of places newly opened.

Prosperous Intelligence dates its data and advises checking with the destination’s official authorities before travelling.

One thing larger than this record comes first: Oman has enacted a personal income tax. Royal Decree No. 56 of 2025, published in Official Gazette No. 1602, signed 22 June 2025. Every older description treating Oman as a jurisdiction without personal income tax is now out of date.

The content readable from the Tax Authority official English question-and-answer set: the rate is 5% where total income exceeds OMR 42,000, and net income is precisely the excess above OMR 42,000 of total income; every resident whose annual total income exceeds that threshold must file a return.

And here is the point that matters most for this record, because it answers directly whether the permit creates tax status: any person who stays in Oman for more than 183 days is considered a tax resident, whether Omani or non-Omani, and those 183 days count whether continuous or intermittent within the year.

Omani tax residence is measured in days of presence, not by class of residence permit — so a golden residency holder neither automatically becomes a tax resident nor automatically escapes.

The consequence for scope: a tax resident is taxed on money and benefits received both in Oman and abroad; a non-resident is taxed only on what is received in Oman.

With it comes a withholding duty on every workplace: government bodies, the private sector, and foreign companies operating in Oman must all withhold and remit to the Tax Authority.

Two rules reach the self-employed: a self-employed person without a commercial registration is still taxable where income exceeds the threshold, and may elect a deduction of 15% of gross self-employment income or documented actual expenses.

One item where the new statute does not carry over a VAT exemption: residential rent is subject to personal income tax.

And one older provision is repealed: paragraph 1 of Article 18 bis of Income Tax Law No. 28 of 2009 is gone, so a non-resident supplying consultancy to a government body is withheld at 5% under the new law rather than 10% under the old.

Two limits of this cell must be recorded, and they matter.

First, tier one is not a silence found on reading but a source not yet verified: the content of twelve Omani state portals, including those of the visa-issuing authority, the justice ministry, the gazette and the investment promotion agency, could not be checked; the only state source that could be checked was the Tax Authority portal.

The royal decree on investment residency therefore could not be read, and this cell does not conclude that the programme is silent on tax — it records that the source was not verified, and those are different things.

Second, the commencement date could not be confirmed: the full text of the decree has not been verified, so no provision is quoted from it.

The only trustworthy content is the Latin numerals, among which the string 2028 sits in the area of the article on publication and entry into force — but this cell does not assert that as the commencement date.

The Tax Authority question set does not state when the law begins to apply, and is written throughout in the future tense, which is consistent with a statute not yet in force — but that is an observation about register, not evidence about a date.

Read this cell within its scope: the question set does not mention the golden residency programme, does not mention any concession for foreign investors, and does not give a commencement date

The fee schedule prints as four rows across two articles, and what repays reading is not the numbers but the rhythm of collection.

Article 4 replaces item 4 under “Entry visas” in Article 29: an investor visa for ten years costs OMR 500, and for five years OMR 300.

Article 7 adds item 30 under the same heading for the family stream: a visa for joining an investor costs OMR 100 for ten years and OMR 50 for five. So far, unremarkable.

The unusual part sits in Articles 5 and 7 on residence renewal fees: a ten-year investor residence pays OMR 500 every three years, a five-year investor residence OMR 300 every three years; a ten-year joining-investor residence pays OMR 100 every three years and a five-year one OMR 50 every three years.

In other words the validity of the document and the billing cycle do not coincide: a ten-year residence is not paid for once for ten years but re-charged at the same rate in years three, six and nine.

One further charge carries no figure yet is real: the penultimate paragraph of Article 10 requires payment of the prescribed fee before the authority converts a visa into one followed by residence, and that rate is not in this decision.