Corporate tax returns in the UAE

In the Emirates the hard part is rarely the rate. It is the calendar: three separate dates, each with its own penalty, and none of them triggered by the others.

The service behind those dates, stripped of any country, lives at corporate tax support. How the rate itself is built, mainland against free zone, is set out in our article on corporate tax for free zone and mainland companies, and our UAE page gathers everything else we do here.

What you get

• A registration number obtained inside the window your incorporation date sets
• A return filed and the tax paid within nine months of your year end
• The first return used to lift a late-registration penalty where the dates allow
• Deregistration filed within three months of the business ending, final return included
• Records kept in a shape that survives the seven years the law asks for

Three dates, three clocks

Registration

A company formed in the Emirates applies within three months of incorporation. A foreign company managed from here has three months from its financial year end, and one with a permanent establishment has six months from the day that establishment began.

Return and payment

Both fall due no later than nine months after the end of the tax period, which for most companies is simply the financial year. There is no separate payment date to remember.

Deregistration

Three months from the day the entity ceases to exist, or from dissolution, liquidation or the end of the business. The authority will not deregister a company that still owes a return, tax or a penalty — and the final return covers the period up to the date of cessation.

The price of each missed date

Late registration draws 10,000 dirhams. Late deregistration draws 1,000 dirhams at once and the same amount every month after, up to 10,000. A late return draws 500 dirhams a month for the first twelve months and 1,000 a month from the thirteenth. Tax left unpaid carries 14% a year, charged monthly.

Where the rate is not 9%

Taxable income up to 375,000 dirhams is taxed at 0% and the excess at 9%. A resident company with revenue at or below 3 million dirhams may elect to be treated as having no taxable income at all — an election open to tax periods ending on or before 31 December 2029, and closed to free zone persons and to members of large international groups. Electing does not remove the duty to register or to file.

Sources: the 0% band and the 9% rate — Federal Decree-Law 47 of 2022 as amended and Cabinet Decision 116 of 2022; the nine-month dates — its Articles 48 and 53; the registration and deregistration windows — FTA Decisions 3 of 2024 and 6 of 2023; the penalties — Cabinet Decision 75 of 2023 as amended; the 3 million threshold and its 2029 end — Ministerial Decisions 73 of 2023 and 131 of 2026.