By Arash Jalali | Venture Builder | Revona

Most people hear the word “debt” and think of stress, bankruptcy and sleepless nights. It is the villain of personal-finance books and the scapegoat of every economic crisis. But after years of building ventures and, at Revona, structuring financing for developers and corporates every day, I have come to see debt very differently.

Debt is not merely a burden to be minimised. It is one of the most elegant, powerful and, yes, contradictory ideas humanity has ever invented.

That distinction matters especially now. Higher rates have made the cost of debt more visible, while a wall of maturities is turning yesterday’s cheap money into tomorrow’s refinancing decision. The response should not be to romanticise leverage. It should be to become more exacting about the work debt is asked to do.

Debt Is Older Than Money Itself

Long before coins and banknotes, communities ran on credit: promises recorded on clay tablets and in shared memory. Debt is, at its core, a technology for moving value through time. It lets tomorrow’s income fund today’s ambition. When a developer borrows to build a tower, or a founder raises venture debt to extend runway, they are pulling the future forward. That is not recklessness; it is one mechanism through which economies compound.

But the debt debate often starts in the wrong place. There is no magic ratio at which prudent borrowing becomes recklessness. A debt ratio is a snapshot; the real story is what the money is financing, whether cash flow can carry it and whether the borrower has time to adapt when conditions change. That is why the quality of the investment, the maturity profile and the resilience of the balance sheet matter more than the headline number alone.

In the architecture of the modern economy, debt does something even more subtle. It reduces the cost of financial oversight, helps create money through the banking system and smooths the path of economic growth. Every mortgage, every credit facility and every bond issue is a small act of coordinated trust between strangers. Trust, priced and packaged, is what capital markets actually trade.

The Debt That Never Dies

The numbers tell a more precise story than the usual rhetoric. Global debt reached a record nearly $353 trillion by the end of March 2026, according to the Institute of International Finance. That figure covers public, corporate and household debt. At the same time, the global debt-to-GDP ratio stood at about 305%, broadly stable since 2023. A record stock of debt, in other words, does not by itself tell us whether borrowers can carry it; the relationship between liabilities, income, assets and refinancing capacity does.

Nor should a stable global aggregate be mistaken for an all-clear. The IIF reported that debt in mature markets edged lower in the first quarter, while debt in emerging markets excluding China rose to a record $36.8 trillion. Debt is never one homogeneous thing. Its burden depends on who owes it, in what currency, at what rate, for how long, and against which cash flows.

The immediate market test is refinancing. The OECD expects governments and companies to borrow $29 trillion from bond markets in 2026 — 17% more than in 2024 and roughly double the amount ten years ago. Much of that activity is not fresh expansion; it is the constant work of renewing obligations. The OECD estimates that 78% of OECD government borrowing in 2026 will refinance existing debt. That is why the calendar can matter as much as the headline debt total.

The U.S. Lesson: Borrowing Can Stabilise Growth

The United States makes the point in unusually stark terms. The Office of Management and Budget’s fiscal-year-end measure of federal debt held by the public — the debt outside federal government accounts — rose from 25.2% of GDP in FY1981 to 99.5% in FY2025.

That is a profound change, but it was not a straight line and it cannot be explained by one White House. The ratio fell from 46.8% in FY1992 to 33.7% in FY2000, then rose through the financial crisis and jumped during the pandemic. The chart shows presidential terms as chronology, not as a scorecard: a fiscal year spans two calendar years, and debt reflects Congress, inherited commitments, recessions, interest costs and emergencies as well as executive choices.

Figure 1. U.S. federal debt held by the public as a share of fiscal-year GDP. Source: Office of Management and Budget, Historical Tables, Table 7.1 (FY2027 release). Debt is measured at fiscal-year end. Administration bands identify the president in office on that date; they do not attribute causation.

The more useful lesson is not that a larger debt stock automatically produces prosperity. It is that, when private demand collapses, borrowing can prevent a deeper contraction. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the major pandemic laws enacted in 2020 increased real GDP by 4.7% in 2020 and 3.1% in 2021, relative to an implied no-legislation baseline.

That is a concrete example of debt financing acting as a bridge: preserving household income, business liquidity and state and local services at a moment when the alternative was a sharper fall in economic activity.

But bridges must lead somewhere. CBO also projected that the additional debt would raise borrowing costs and reduce output and national income over the longer term. The point is not to celebrate the size of the U.S. debt pile. It is to recognise that borrowing can be a positive driver of growth when it is targeted at a productive investment or a defined emergency — and that its value erodes when cash flows, repayment capacity and the economic return are treated as afterthoughts.

The Beautiful Contradiction

Debt is a paradox, and that is precisely what makes it beautiful. It is simultaneously:

The same instrument that funds a hospital can sink a household. The same leverage that lets a developer sell units before completion can, if mispriced, freeze an entire market. Debt does not care about intentions; it amplifies what is already there. Good projects can become great. Weak projects can fail faster. That amplification is the whole point.

The Revona Angle: Debt as Craft, Not Gamble

This is exactly where Revona operates, and why I find this space so compelling as a builder. If debt is a powerful but indifferent amplifier, the real value lies not in whether a client borrows, but in how the debt is engineered: the rate, the loan-to-value, the tenor, the covenants and the match between an asset’s cash flows and the facility that finances it.

Those are not cosmetic details. A lower headline rate can be a poor bargain if it comes with a refinancing date that arrives before the asset can reliably generate cash. A high loan-to-value ratio may look efficient until a change in valuations removes the borrower’s room for error. A fixed rate can buy time, but it does not eliminate the economics of refinancing.

That final distinction is becoming more important. The Federal Reserve reported in 2025 that long-term, fixed-rate liabilities had softened the initial pass-through of higher rates for large public companies. Yet about 15% of investment-grade bonds and 27% of high-yield bonds were due to mature within one to three years. The protection was real; it was also time-limited.

The OECD has similarly warned that, as higher long-term rates lead borrowers to issue at shorter maturities, near-term interest costs may fall while near-term refinancing risk rises.

At Revona, we treat financing as a craft. We map a client’s full balance sheet, identify untapped equity and structural inefficiencies, and match their profile against the lending criteria of more than sixty banks and institutions to find the optimal structure, not simply the fastest “yes.”

For developers, well-structured off-plan financing can mean buyers are pre-approved during construction, sales accelerate and project cash flow improves. Debt, structured properly, stops being merely a cost of doing business and becomes a competitive advantage.

The failures we associate with debt — the crashes, defaults and horror stories — are more often failures of structure and underwriting than evidence that debt is inherently flawed. They arise when there is too much leverage against too little cash flow; when short-term money funds long-term assets; when currency, revenue and debt-service obligations do not match; or when no one has stress-tested the downside.

The instrument gets blamed for the craftsmanship.

The Takeaway

Debt is usually framed as financial pressure and bankruptcy risk, but its role in the modern economy runs far deeper. It is a centuries-old technology for turning trust into growth, a nearly $353 trillion river of contractual claims, and a mirror that reflects the discipline — or indiscipline — of whoever wields it.

The world’s most sophisticated companies and governments do not avoid debt. They engineer it. As builders and investors, that should be our posture too: respect the contradiction, master the structure and let leverage do what it was invented to do — move the future forward.

AJ is a venture builder. Revona is a financing partner and portfolio manager providing institutional-grade credit and debt financing solutions for developers and corporates.

What could follow the December deadline is an assessment cycle, not a filing cycle.

By Manish Bansal, Associate Partner, Dhruva Advisors, A Ryan Affiliate, Saudi Arabia

For most of the past five years, inter-alia, one of the major topics of tax conversation in Saudi boardrooms has been e-invoicing. Are we on the Fatoora platform? Which wave are we in? Has the ERP been configured or do we go with a third-party e-invoicing solution? Will we make the deadline?

Those were the right questions for the period we have just left. They are not necessarily the right questions for the period we are entering.

On 29 June 2026, the Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority (“ZATCA”), acting on a decision of the Minister of Finance, extended the Cancellation of Fines and Exemption of Financial Penalties initiative for a further six months, running from 1 July to 31 December 2026. It covers excise tax, value added tax, real estate transaction tax, withholding tax and corporate income tax. That much has been widely reported.

Less widely noticed is a condition set out in the accompanying guideline. If the Authority extends the initiative again past December, that further extension will not reach returns that fell due after 30 June 2026.

The Authority has not simply granted more time. It has informed the market, in advance, where the relief eventually stops. Whatever is announced in December, the clean-up window for historical positions is being drawn shut. For a tax administration, that is about as clear a statement as one can give.

What the regulator already sees

The reason this matters now, rather than in some indeterminate future, is that the Authority’s information position has changed fundamentally.

Wave 24 of the e-invoicing Integration Phase closed on 30 June 2026. Announced in September 2025, it captured every taxpayer whose VAT-subject revenues exceeded SAR 375,000 in 2022, 2023 or 2024. That figure is not arbitrary: it is the mandatory VAT registration threshold. In effect, the wave brought the entire registered population into scope.

And the direction has not stopped there. On 24 July 2026 – ZATCA published the criteria for Wave 25, halving the threshold to SAR 187,500 of VAT-subject revenue in 2022, 2023, 2024 or 2025, with integration required by 1 February 2027.

Under the Integration Phase, standard business-to-business invoices are cleared by ZATCA before they reach the buyer, and simplified business-to-consumer invoices are reported within twenty-four hours. Invoices must be issued in a prescribed structured format, carrying a cryptographic stamp and a unique identifier.

The Authority is therefore no longer reliant on what appears in a filed return. It holds the underlying transactional record, in structured form, close to real time, across the whole economy.

This is the shift most finance functions have not yet absorbed. For years, the Saudi assessment process began with an information request. In an environment of structured, near-live data, it begins instead with an anomaly the system has already identified. The taxpayer’s first substantive contact with the process is not a request for documents. It is a proposition to be answered.

Key exposure areas to be mindful of

In our experience, the following key areas could be more visible and exposed to assessment risk in the Kingdom once transactional data can be cross matched against declarations.

The first is permanent establishment risk arising from project delivery. Groups routinely deploy technical staff, secondees and subcontracted specialists into Saudi projects while treating the arrangement as an offshore supply.  Given that most KSA government portals are inter-linked, careful monitoring of in-Kingdom presence is critical, in particular, employees of non-resident companies undertaking fly-in/fly-out assignments in the Kingdom.  It is worth noting that the current tax law has no de minimis threshold for the creation of a permanent establishment.  Accordingly, even a single day of presence in the Kingdom could potentially give rise to a permanent establishment, although in practice, the ZATCA may apply a more facts-based approach when assessing whether a permanent establishment exists.

Second is related-party pricing, and here a change that took effect two years ago is still under-appreciated. Following amendments to the Transfer Pricing By-Laws, the transfer pricing provisions apply to zakat payers as well as taxpayers for financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2024, and Advance Pricing Agreements became available to both. For a Saudi family group with decades of intercompany arrangements built for operational convenience rather than for documentation, this is a material change in obligation, and one that many such groups have not yet worked through.

Lastly, needless to state that VAT audits are likely to get much more sophisticated with real time data and the data analytics and AI tools available.

What the amnesty covers, and what it does not

Many companies are counting on this window. It is worth being precise about what it covers.

The initiative covers late registration, late payment and late filing fines, penalties on the amendment or correction of a VAT return, and other financial fines imposed under Article 45 of the VAT Law, including field detection and e-invoicing violations. To benefit, a taxpayer must register where registration is required, submit the outstanding returns, and either pay the amounts due or obtain ZATCA’s approval for an instalment plan.

Two limits deserve emphasis. The initiative does not extend to penalties relating to tax evasion violations. And it operates on fines for returns falling due up to 30 June 2026.

There is also a point that no guideline states because it does not need to. The initiative waives penalties. It does not validate a technical position. A voluntary disclosure that corrects an arithmetic omission is a straightforward matter. A voluntary disclosure that reveals a contestable tax treatment is a different exercise entirely, because it puts a position on the record that will be read. The analysis must come before the filing, not after it.

Fewer than four months

For most groups, what remains to be done before 31 December is a short list. It is also, notably, not a systems exercise. The e-invoicing platforms are already built and connected. The work now is reviewing the positions those systems have been reporting all along.

Reconcile first. Take VAT/ Tax/ Zakat returns, customs declarations, withholding tax filings and audited financial statements for the open years and reconcile them against one another before ZATCA’s systems do it. Where the numbers do not tie, understand why, and document the reason contemporaneously rather than reconstructing it under assessment.

Then sort. Separate the genuine errors, which the current window is designed to resolve, from the judgement positions, which need to be assessed on their merits and defended with evidence that pre-dates the query.

Finally, treat documentation as a deliverable with a deadline. Substantiation assembled after an assessment notice arrives carries markedly less weight than substantiation prepared when the transaction occurred.

A regulator that publishes wave criteria six months ahead, that notifies taxpayers directly, that issues guidance with worked examples, and that tells the market in advance where relief will end, is behaving like the administration of a mature investment destination. That predictability is an asset for serious businesses, and it is what long-term capital looks for.

But predictability runs in both directions. The Kingdom has been clear about what it expects and when. The businesses that will move through the coming assessment cycle with least disruption are those that use the next few months to answer the questions before they are asked.

Disclaimer: This article is intended for general information only and does not constitute tax, legal, accounting or other professional advice. It reflects the tax rules in force as of the publication date, and the described regulatory landscape continues to develop. Readers should obtain professional advice appropriate to their own facts and circumstances before acting on any matter discussed.

By Joe David, CEO of Nephos Group

“Move to Dubai for tax.”

I hear this constantly. From founders, investors, crypto-native operators – people building real businesses who reduce one of the biggest decisions of their professional lives to a single line on a spreadsheet.

And honestly, it is the wrong way to think about it.

Tax should rarely be the sole reason to relocate. When it is, it is usually where things go wrong. The corporate structure is not set up correctly. The banking relationships are not in place. The founder leaves within 18 months because the deeper rationale was never really there. I have seen this pattern play out dozens of times over the past decade, and it almost always traces back to the same root cause: a decision built on a tax rate rather than a strategy.

The tax-first trap

Dubai’s zero per cent personal income tax rate is real, and it is significant. But leading with tax creates a narrow frame that obscures the fuller picture. Founders who relocate purely for a rate often fail to consider the operational realities of building in a new jurisdiction. They underestimate the compliance infrastructure required to make the move defensible. They overlook the substance requirements that tax authorities in their home countries will scrutinise. When the expected savings do not materialise cleanly, because the structure was an afterthought, disillusionment sets in fast.

This does Dubai a disservice. It reduces a genuinely world-class business environment to a line in a tax planning brochure. The city deserves better than that, and so do the founders making life-altering decisions based on incomplete thinking.

What the successful ones actually optimise for

The founders and investors who get the most out of Dubai are not chasing a tax rate. They are making a broader strategic move.

Jurisdictional access is a major factor. Dubai sits at the crossroads of Europe, Africa and Asia, offering time zone coverage and travel connectivity that few cities can match. For businesses operating across multiple markets, particularly in digital assets, fintech and professional services, that geographic positioning is a genuine competitive edge.

Then there is the capital environment. Dubai has become a magnet for institutional and private capital, with fund structures, family offices and venture vehicles establishing a permanent presence. The banking infrastructure, while still maturing in certain areas, has improved significantly. For crypto-native businesses in particular, the regulatory clarity offered by frameworks like the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) provides something that many Western jurisdictions still cannot: a clear, codified path to operating legally with digital assets.

The business ecosystem itself is another draw. The speed at which you can incorporate, hire, open accounts and begin operating is remarkable compared to legacy jurisdictions. Free zones offer tailored licensing, and the government’s responsiveness to emerging sectors – AI, blockchain, tokenised finance – signals a jurisdiction that is building forward rather than regulating backward.

And then, yes, there is the lifestyle. Climate, safety, connectivity, quality of infrastructure. These are not trivial considerations when you are asking a founding team to commit to a base for the next five to ten years.

Tax is often the outcome of all of this. It is not the strategy itself.

The compliance landscape is shifting

There is another reason the tax-first mindset is increasingly risky. The global compliance environment is tightening rapidly. The Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), developed by the OECD, will require automatic exchange of information on crypto transactions between jurisdictions. The EU’s DAC8 directive introduces similar obligations across member states. The days of relocating and assuming your home country’s tax authority will not follow are numbered.

This means that substance, genuine economic activity, real operational presence, defensible corporate structures, matters more than ever. A Dubai relocation that is purely cosmetic will not survive scrutiny. One that is built on genuine strategic foundations, with proper advisory support and compliant structures, will.

The conversation worth having

None of this is an argument against moving to Dubai. Quite the opposite. For the right founder, with the right business, at the right stage, it can be a transformative decision. But that decision needs to be grounded in strategy, not arithmetic.

Before you start calculating your tax savings, ask the harder questions. Does your business model benefit from being in this jurisdiction? Can you build genuine substance here? Are your corporate structures defensible under international reporting frameworks? Do you have the advisory infrastructure to get this right from day one?

That distinction – between tax as a tactic and strategy as a foundation – matters more than most people realise. And it is a conversation worth having before you make any decisions.