The UAE does not care, as far as I know. As long as you’re not out of the country for more than 180 days, they’ll probably consider you a resident.
But if you want to get a tax residency
certificate, you need to stay at least 183 days per year in the UAE.
What does that mean in practice? Check the tax treaty between other countries you spend time in and the UAE, if there are any. Also check the national rules of those countries.
There will probably be a rule that if you stay less than 183 days in both countries, certain other criteria will decide. Such as where you have the center of your economic and personal life etc.
Of course then it would be useful (to put it mildly) to be able to show a lease agreement, utility bill etc. to show that you have stronger ties to the UAE than to the other country.
So I'm Italian, currently resident in Albania, moving my residency to Spain. I have no wife, children, any kind of property in any country, but I will inherit at some point a house in Italy. I'm moving my residency to Spain because the Albanian residency was something I did in 2012, but I have nothing there, I never go there, while I spend 5 months a year in Spain and I'm a permanent resident of Spain since 2008,as I lived there for one year. I currently have a company in St. Vincent and the Grenadines which sells IT services ( website or app development, I have clients in the UK, France and US at the moment ) and TransferWise as the only bank account, so no CRS problems for now.
My question about residency was more a curiosity, if I ever was to tell Italy that I'm resident in the UAE I would need an address, right?How can UAE give me residency if I don't have an address?That's what I'm curious about. My current plan could be to move everything into the UAE, but keep telling to Italy that I'm resident in Spain, as being resident in the UAE is a red flag in Italy, although I never made more than 20.000€ a year in Italy, so I always flew under the radar, but it's always better to have my home country believe I'm resident in a high tax country.
So my long term setup would be:
- For Italy, pretend to be resident in Spain. I can show Italy that I spend more time in Spain than in Italy. Once you get registered as non resident, Italy doesn't check much, the important thing is that they are able to deliver the papers for voting to the address you are registered to, otherwise they might get suspicious about the address.
- For Spain, to have nothing there, I don't even have a rental contracts, no banks, nothing. I would remove empadronamiento next year, but I have no business ties to spain, as having the permanent residency status meant I didn't even need a bank account to have the green nie.
- For UAE, be resident there by entering once every 180 days and keep the company there, and all my bank accounts there.
No wife, no kids, no property ( unless I buy something with the company ), not more than 182 days in any state.
Also residence visa is included, something that cost AED 4510 and is valid for 3 years. They also included medical and Emirates ID, which altogether cost around AED 750.
Creative City is one of the most easy going freezones as no audits are required, no business plan to submit, no paid up capital is required. 
