Every UAE tax change, as it happens.

If your turnover puts you in the first wave, onboarding an accredited service provider is now urgent rather than optional — invoices issued the old way will not meet the reporting requirement. We can map your current invoicing and credit-note flows, connect your accounting system to an accredited provider, and run a parallel test cycle so your first live reporting period is clean. If you are not yet in scope, we will confirm which wave you fall into and when to start preparing.

This looks like a filing formality, but it is really a targeted anti-abuse measure for free-zone distribution. If you claim 0% on distribution income in or from a Designated Zone, you now need an Agreed-Upon Procedures report, prepared to a set ISRS 4400 methodology and filed within 30 days of your Corporate Tax return. Because it applies retroactively from 1 January 2026, start gathering customer trade licences, reseller declarations and customs records now rather than reconstructing them at year-end — and remember the report proves procedure, not entitlement to the 0% rate.

Nine months sounds generous, but the return surfaces decisions you cannot rush — opening balances for your first tax period, whether to elect for Small Business Relief, and how related-party transactions are priced. Leaving it to September also means competing for reviewer time when every December year-end is filing at once. We recommend drafting the return now, resolving any open positions early, and filing well before the 30 September deadline so any tax due is funded and planned rather than a surprise.

If you sell online across the Emirates, the practical question is whether your systems capture the emirate of supply at transaction level — many do not, and the Emirate breakdown in box 1 then has to be estimated. That is exactly the kind of figure that draws questions on a VAT audit. We can review how your platform and accounting system tag each sale, reconfigure the VAT mapping, and make sure your next return ties back to the underlying records without manual re-work.

Two things catch businesses out here. First, the arm's-length principle and the related-party disclosure on the Corporate Tax return apply even when you are below the Local File and Master File thresholds — being small does not exempt your intercompany pricing. Second, documentation is expected to exist when you file, not to be written afterwards if you are questioned. We benchmark your related-party charges, prepare the Local and Master Files where the thresholds are met, and give you a defensible position before the return is due.

This is a big-group rule, not an SME one. If your consolidated group revenue is below EUR 750 million, nothing changes and you remain on the standard 9% Corporate Tax. If you are part of an in-scope multinational, the work is data rather than guesswork — you need consistent financial information across every UAE entity to calculate the effective tax rate and any top-up. We help in-scope groups scope their entities, gather the Pillar Two data, and model the likely top-up well before year-end.

There is nothing to file yet, but the direction of travel is now fixed in law, and the go-live dates followed quickly. The cheapest preparation is a software decision — choosing an accounting platform that can integrate with an accredited service provider, and cleaning up your customer and product master data now, while there is no deadline pressure. We can review whether your current system is on the providers' roadmap and flag the gaps you would otherwise only discover during onboarding.

The changes that bite most are around evidence. If you zero-rate exports or supply certain financial services, the documentation you keep to support that treatment has to meet the updated rules — and the burden is on you to produce it, not on the authority to disprove it. We recommend a short review of your zero-rated and exempt supplies against the amended regulation, so anything at risk of being reclassified as standard-rated is corrected before your next return rather than on audit.

If you have not registered for Corporate Tax, treat this as urgent. The AED 10,000 penalty applies for late registration regardless of whether you actually owe any tax, and the deadline depends on the month your licence was originally issued — not on your financial year. Send us your trade licence and we will confirm your exact deadline, complete the registration on the FTA portal, and, if a deadline has already passed, advise on the penalty and any waiver or instalment options available.