One of the biggest selling points for people and businesses relocating to the UAE, over the first 44 years of its existence, has been the near universal absence of individual taxes.

No individual income tax. No sales tax. No inheritance taxes. No property taxes.

If you were paid $100,000 by your employer … you received the whole of that $100,000. That was the case for businesses, too, unless you were a foreign bank or oil company. Or, on a micro scale, if you were a non-Muslim buying alcohol, which in Abu Dhabi carries a 20 percent tax.

Now, however, it seems clear the UAE, in concert with the other countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council will impose a value-added tax (often known by the initials VAT) sometime in the next couple of years. The story linked, above, brooks no “if” — referring to a VAT “when” it comes into effect.

And a nearly tax-free polity will be no more.

It is remarkable how quickly a person can become conditioned to the wonder that is a mostly tax-free existence.

When you buy a $499 television … it costs $499. Not $499 plus whatever VAT or sales tax is added on top of that.

When you earn $100,000, it’s yours. Various levels of government (federal, state) do not take 10, 20, 50 percent off the top, in one or more income taxes.

Returning to the U.S., or visiting Europe, and a 10 percent sales tax or a 20 percent VAT … comes as a shock tinged with a bit of annoyance. You find yourself thinking things like, “Hey, that’s theft!” Just like Tea Party people, or Libertarians, might suggest.

And, also? You don’t file taxes. Not only do you not give your money to the government, you don’t have to fret about some looming deadline to hand over what you owe.

It has been wonderful.

How was the UAE able to exist so long without a significant tax on individual?

By selling oil. Lots and lots of oil. The government didn’t need additional revenue from taxation.

Even now, in a more diversified economy, the government still gets 60 percent of its revenue from the sale of oil, according to The National.

However, oil prices have fallen to half of what they were in early 2014, and don’t seem to be headed higher anytime soon, and that has impacted the finances of governments in the region.

Which is where the VAT comes in. The cost of goods and services will sometime soon include a tax in addition to the basic price — as is the case in most of the world — and provide the government with a new and significant revenue stream.

The government here has said it will give consumers and businesses 18 months warning, ahead of Day 1 of the VAT.

And this editorial in The National suggests the VAT here “would not apply to basic goods and would be tapered upwards, so that VAT was higher on luxury goods and alcohol”.

The UAE will still be known as a country with limited and circumscribed taxation. No income tax is planned, for instance.

But the marvel of a 21st century nation taking almost nothing from its residents via taxation … that will be passing into history.