source : the age
Adrian Portelli’s rationale for moving to Dubai, at least in his telling, is pretty simple. Australia is “chasing away success”, according to the Melbourne-born billionaire, and entrepreneurs like him will keep leaving with one-way tickets because of exceedingly harsh tax settings.
“I don’t trust the government,” Portelli told Karl Stefanovic in a new episode of the broadcaster’s controversial podcast. “They’ve really come down on me.
“I’ve had regulatory issues to ATO [Australian Taxation Office] issues, and I just can’t handle it.”
Portelli has more than 1 million followers on social media and in August, he told them he was relocating to the Middle East, in response to this year’s federal budget, and its sweeping changes to capital gains and property taxes that sparked warnings that innovation in Australia would be stifled.
Critics, including other young entrepreneurs, united to lobby against changes to capital gains taxes for business. Broadly, Portelli and Stefanovic’s discussion suggested wealthy Australians could vote with their feet and shift their lives and their businesses overseas, to countries where the regulatory burden is less prohibitive.
Portelli is doing so and more are intending to follow his lead, according to Victoria Wells, a Melbourne lawyer who started her firm, Ape Law, in the United Arab Emirates in 2022.
Last month, Wells and partner Stephan Roberto, along with Bali-based influencer couple Matt Cameron and Felicity Morgan, launched the business “Project Get Out”, to capitalise on Australians – particularly those working in tech – wanting to shift overseas.
They received 1000 inquiries shortly after launching – just as Portelli went viral for his move.
But experts warn that it is not always straightforward for relocating Australians to cash in on lower tax rates.
Deakin Business School lecturer Dr Kerui Zhai said Australia’s higher personal income taxes and the changes to capital gains tax were among the incentives for entrepreneurs to relocate to the UAE, where they could obtain “significant tax savings”. But he pointed out that companies with income largely derived from Australia would “probably still be subject to Australian corporate tax”.
About 25,000 Australians live and work in Dubai. Expats from across the world comprise about 88 per cent of the broader UAE population, which hovered at 11 million in 2025, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
While some have left due to the war in Iran, Professor Sunita Jogarajan, from the University of Melbourne Law School, said there was a long-term increase in Australians making the move since the pandemic, with destinations such as Bali and Singapore also spruiking tax benefits to attract expats.
“I can see it from the cases going through the Administrative Review Tribunal. I have been in tax more than 20 years. There just was not as many [cases related to Australians’ tax status] as before,” Jogarajan said.
Tribunal records show the ATO has indeed been pursuing Australians living overseas deemed to be tax residents to pay their share, regardless of where they are.
‘I’ve had regulatory issues to ATO issues, and I just can’t handle it.’
Adrian Portelli
Engineer Trong Quy sought a refund of $524,943.29 from the tax office for the period between 2016 and 2020 because he claimed Dubai was his primary place of residence. But in March last year, he lost his final bid for a refund, as the tribunal ruled he was a resident of Australia.
The tribunal judgment said: “Despite not treating Australia as his home in the relevant years, the applicant maintained connections with Australia that are objectively inconsistent with his ‘abandoning’ residence in Australia and making Dubai a ‘permanent’ (in the sense of not temporary) home.”
These connections included that Quy’s family home was in Perth, where his wife and daughters lived. Quy also acknowledged that he left other personal belongings in Australia “including winter clothing (not required in Dubai’s climate) and two guitars that he had been restoring”.
Earlier this year, oil and gas executive Ragnar Bulie won against the ATO, after it sought to make him pay tax on income earned in Singapore between 2018 and 2022.
Bulie, who is from Norway and owns property in Australia, lived in Singapore during that time while his wife and children resided in Australia. He was earning about $700,000 per year, according to the tribunal’s judgment.
“Mr Bulie’s economic and personal relations to Singapore were, in composite, stronger than his economic and personal relations to Australia during the relevant period,” the tribunal ruled.
Portelli earned his estimated $1.44 billion fortune – according to The Australian Financial Review’s Rich List – from his subscription-based lottery business that recently expanded into petrol stations. Before his move overseas, the federal government unveiled legislation to outlaw his business model.
Discussing his plans for a new business, a “streamlined way for Australians to import goods”, Portelli told Stefanovic “they froze my accounts”.
“I couldn’t pay my wages, I couldn’t pay staff. I couldn’t pay my bills. They just froze it all,” he said, without explaining exactly who took the action against him.
“My accountant said he has never seen anything like this. He genuinely said they have abused their power.
“They are chasing young entrepreneurs, very talented [Australians]. People of wealth and success are moving. They are fleeing.”
In the UAE, corporate income is taxed at 9 per cent and there is no personal income tax. In Australia, companies pay a tax rate of at least 25 per cent, and personal income rates top out at 45 per cent for the most well-paid Australians.
Jogarajan, who acknowledged she did not know how Portelli’s business was structured, suggested the billionaire could still be treated as an Australian resident for tax purposes.
“Foreign residents are taxed in Australia on any money they make in Australia,” she said. “That’s the kind of thing people pay lawyers to get advice on.”
Portelli did not respond to a request for comment.
Speaking generally, Jogarajan said: “You really need to move and have a home overseas and not have those connections to Australia.
“One of the big issues is if the family doesn’t move. The individual might be in Australia for a short number of days, say 30 or 60 days, and not typically be considered a resident here, if their family and children are still here.”
Wells’ “Project Get Out” seeks to advise on relocation and tax residency issues for Australian founders, investors and high-net-worth families. She said the venture wasn’t “about engineering arrangements to avoid Australian tax”.
“Tax is legitimately one consideration in that decision, alongside lifestyle, family, business opportunity, regulation and access to markets – but it shouldn’t be the decision itself. I often say that tax should be one coordinate on the map, not the compass,” Wells said.
Wells contemplated her exit from Australia years before the latest military action in the Middle East. After the price of crypto crashed in 2022, which coincided with news that the asset would no longer be treated as a foreign currency, and hit with capital gains tax in Australia, Wells said many founders and crypto firms left Australia.
“That was really the writing on the wall for me. My friends and my peers were leaving. I was like, OK, I have to figure this out. Are there going to jobs in crypto in Australia? No. Are there going to be clients in crypto in Australia? No, they are also leaving,” she said.
During the past 3½ years operating her Dubai-based law firm, Wells specialises in financial services, international arbitration and crypto. She said the business had reported exponential growth from clients seeking to domicile their companies in the UAE.
Since launching “Project Get Out”, Wells said she continued to clock 200 inquiries a day.
“Adrian Portelli announced his departure from Australia, it was picked up and got a lot of press. [Meanwhile], the work that I do, naturally puts me front and centre for a lot of Australians looking at making an exit to the UAE specifically,” she said.
Morgan, one of her Australian co-founders, is an influencer who moved to Bali two years ago.
Her business, Felicity Morgan Coaching, was liquidated last September. According to the liquidator’s report in December, Morgan owed the ATO $774,118.65 in unpaid liabilities. The report also said Morgan received a director’s loan from the company for $1.08 million, which the liquidator requested be repaid.
Morgan said: “The current status is incorrect, however, things take time to show on the system.”
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