What the treaty does not contain
Many Indian treaties have an article that taxes fees for technical services even when the foreign firm has no office in India. The India-UAE treaty does not. The articles run through business profits, royalties, and the rest. There is no fees-for-technical-services article to apply.
So a fee for services in the ordinary course of the UAE company's business is looked at as business profit, unless it is actually something the treaty names, such as a royalty. Business profit is taxable in India only to the extent it is attributable to a permanent establishment in India.
The nine-month service test
Article 5(2)(i) includes a permanent establishment where a UAE enterprise furnishes services, including consultancy, through employees or other personnel in India, for the same project or a connected project, for more than nine months in total within any twelve-month period.
Nine months or less on that test does not, by itself, create this kind of permanent establishment. It also does not answer the fixed-place test or the agent test. Those are on the permanent establishment page. A cost-plus Indian subsidiary is a different pattern again, covered on the subsidiary page.
Royalty is still royalty
Article 12 taxes royalties. The definition includes a payment for the use of, or the right to use, a copyright, patent, trademark, design, model, plan, secret formula or process, or for information concerning industrial, commercial or scientific experience. If the recipient is the beneficial owner, the Indian tax is capped at 10 per cent of the gross amount.
A report that transfers the firm's know-how can be argued as a royalty. A fee for the firm's own staff to do the work is more often a service. The label on the invoice does not decide it. Someone has to read the contract.
If the payer withholds as if a fees-for-technical-services article existed, the UAE company has a cash-flow problem even when the treaty rate is nil. The papers the payer usually wants are the company certificate and Form 41, plus a short note of why there is no permanent establishment. Excess tax already deducted is recovered through the Indian return, not by rewriting the invoice.
If a person invoices in their own name
Article 14, not Article 7, covers professional services of an individual. India may tax that income if the person has a fixed base in India, or if their stay in India amounts to 183 days or more in the relevant Indian previous year. A company invoice and a personal invoice are different tests. Do not use the nine-month company test for a person billing in their own name.