Accounting and audit support in Oman

The Omani question is not whether you sit above a threshold. It is whether you hold a current decision. Attaching audited accounts to the return is the default, and the release from it is a permission with dates written on it.

Relief decisions of this kind are an Omani device. The service standing behind these dates, stripped of any country, lives at accounting support; our Oman page gathers whatever else we handle here.

What the Tax Authority asks for

• Registration within sixty days of the enterprise beginning or of the activity starting, whichever comes first.
• The return of income filed electronically before four months have run from the end of the tax year or of the accounting period.
• The accounts for that period attached to it: the balance sheet, the profit and loss account, the notes and the schedules that complete them.
• An auditor legally licensed to exercise the accounting and audit profession in Oman. The licence is what the law names; the size of the firm is beside the point.
• Registers, books of accounts and the documents proving their contents held at least ten years after the period they belong to.

Where the release begins and ends

The three tests

Capital recorded in the commercial register at the end of the period no higher than 50,000 rials, gross income for that period no higher than 300,000 rials, and an average of no more than ten employees counted however they were engaged.

The decision

Release takes effect only by an approval decision on your application. It fixes the period covered, how long it lasts and any conditions attached, and it can be withdrawn if it was issued on an incorrect ground.

The renewal

Three months before the decision expires at the latest, the application goes in again for the following year. There is no rollover.

The separate small-enterprise route

A different set of limits governs the three per cent rate: capital up to 50,000 rials, gross income up to 100,000 rials and an average of up to fifteen employees, with fifteen days to tell the Authority when one of them fails.

What lateness costs

The fines are modest and they land on separate things. A return filed late draws between 100 and 2,000 rials. Withholding statements, accounts or accounting records draws between 200 and 5,000 rials, and it can be imposed on the principal officer as well as on the company. Tax left unpaid carries an extra one per cent for every month it stays outstanding.

A ledger in another currency needs permission

Books may be maintained in a foreign currency only with the Authority's authorisation. Even where it is given, taxable income is still computed in rials at the average of the buying and selling rates on the closing date of the period, as published by the Central Bank of Oman.

Sources: accounts attached to the return, ten-year retention, foreign-currency books and the fines — the Income Tax Law, Royal Decree 28/2009 as amended; the release tests and the renewal — the Executive Regulation; sixty days and four months — the Tax Authority portal.