How to Avoid Dependent Fees in 2017 in Saudi Arabia

How to Avoid Dependent Fee in KSA in 2017

 

As announced by the government, there are going to be new fees implemented from July 2017 which aims at decreasing the non-Saudi population of the Kingdom. Instead of reducing the work force direct by force or stopping the issue of visa, the government has come up with indirect way to decrease non-Saudi population – that is by the implementation of Dependent fee.

The dependent fees is implemented on all non-working members of the family. They include spouse  & children of the working member. And if the parents of the working member are here, the dependent fee is applicable to them also. However, there is still lack of clarity if children less 18 years will have to pay dependent fee or not. There have been many Whatspp messages & Facebook posts having different view points regarding dependent fees but there is no official confirmation from government which is correct.

Below is the table giving the split of dependent fee to be paid each year. Note that the dependent fee is starting from SR 100 in July 2017 and gradually increased to SR 400 per person by July 2020.

 

As it can been seen, the dependent fee is dramatically increasing every year.

However, this fee can be avoided for a short time by renewing the visa before start of fee period. The fee is applied with the renewal of iqama (now known as Muqeem card). The renewal can be done 3 months (90 days) in advance of the expiry of iqama. So that means those people whose iqama is expiring before September 28 can renew before 1st July without paying the dependent fee this year. However, as Eid holidays are starting from 15th June, 2017 that mean the renewal has to be done before that date which in turn means that only those whose iqama is expiring before 13th September can only renew and avoid the dependent fee for this year (2017). However they have to pay the few next year (2018) when they renew their iqama.