Key takeaways
Who has to file — and when
Every taxable person under Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 must register with the Federal Tax Authority and file a corporate tax return — including businesses whose taxable income falls entirely within the 0% band and those electing Small Business Relief. The return covers your tax period (normally your financial year) and is due within nine months of that period’s end: a 31 December year end means a 30 September deadline the following year.
The nine months sound generous. In practice, the deadline that matters arrives earlier: your books must be closed, reconciled and reviewable before any computation can begin. Businesses that treat the filing date as the start date are the ones filing extensions of goodwill that don’t exist — there is no standard extension mechanism.
From accounting profit to taxable income
The computation starts with accounting net profit prepared under acceptable standards (IFRS, or IFRS for SMEs below the revenue threshold). From there, the law adjusts: exempt income such as qualifying dividends comes out; disallowed costs — fines, certain entertainment percentages, expenditure not incurred wholly for the business — are added back; interest deductions may be capped; and related-party transactions must be restated to arm’s length where they were not priced there.
Each adjustment needs a working paper behind it. If the FTA reviews your return, the question will not be “what number did you file?” but “show us how you got it.” A computation without schedules is a liability, even when the arithmetic happens to be right.
Reliefs worth checking before you file
Small Business Relief lets businesses with revenue up to AED 3 million in the relevant period (and each prior period since the regime began) elect to be treated as having no taxable income — a genuine simplification, though it comes with trade-offs, including the inability to use losses generated while relief applies.
Free zone entities should assess Qualifying Free Zone Person status carefully rather than assume it: the 0% rate on qualifying income depends on substance, on the nature of the income, and on staying within de-minimis limits for non-qualifying revenue. Losing QFZP status has multi-year consequences, so this is a pre-filing analysis, not a filing-day checkbox.
Where first-time filers go wrong
The failure patterns are consistent. Books maintained on a cash basis that must be restated to accruals. Owner drawings and personal expenses mixed into company costs. Related-party charges — management fees, rent from a connected landlord, owner remuneration — with no arm’s-length support. Depreciation policies chosen for no reason anyone remembers. None of these is fatal; all of them take longer to fix in month eight than in month two.
The other pattern is procedural: registrations completed but EmaraTax access lost, notices sent to an email nobody monitors, and deadlines tracked in nobody’s calendar. Corporate tax is an annual filing but a year-round obligation — assign an owner, internal or external.
A sensible filing timeline
Working back from a 30 September deadline for a December year end: books closed and reconciled by end of February; adjustments analysed and reliefs assessed by end of April; draft computation reviewed by June; return submitted by August with a buffer for questions. Compressing that into September is possible — we do it every year for clients who arrive late — but options narrow and costs rise as the calendar shortens.
If your books are behind, start with the bookkeeping, not the tax. A computation is only as defensible as the records under it, and the FTA’s documentation requirements assume records exist, not that they will be reconstructed on request.
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Related reading
This article is general information, not tax advice. Rules, rates and thresholds change, and their application depends on your circumstances. Confirm your position with a qualified adviser before acting.