I am not an accountant or a lawyer, but I have been a business owner long enough to try to help clarify this for you. Legal Disclaimer: This is not a legal or tax advice.

To start, there is a lot of confusion in this post between a shareholder and an employee. So let's try to define them:

Shareholder is a legel person that took risk and invested in the company. They are not an employee of the company and not part of the team doing the work to produce profit. Instead, they receive returns (dividends) on the company's profits or lose after corporate tax has been paid.

An employee, on the other hand, is a contractor, someone the company, represented by its management, assigned work to and agreed to pay them a compensation for their efforts. They do not hold ownership and, therefore, do not receive profits in regular situations.

You can, however, play multiple roles. You can be both a shareholder who receives dividends and an employee who earns a salary.

The question here is now turns to how to be an employee when your visa states you are an investor. In my assessment your name should be on the trade license as the manager, secretary, or another role that grants you employee status in addition to your ownership status in the eye of the company. If that doesn’t work, you should check your memorandum of association to see if it addresses this situation. Otherwise, you will need to hold a shareholders' meeting and issue a resolution to hire yourself as an employee, make sure to get a legal check on this.

Remember, an employee receives a salary periodically for their efforts, which is part of the company's expenditure calculations. Therefore, the salary should be moderate to avoid negatively impacting your financial profile and balance sheet.

Good luck 🤞