UAE Corporate Tax: Registration, Computation and Filing

Every taxable person registers with the Federal Tax Authority through EmaraTax and obtains a Tax Registration Number. The filing and payment deadline is tied to the entity's financial year, so the calendar is set from the licence and the accounting period rather than assumed.

We register the entity, confirm which period is the first tax period, and build the calendar forward, including any notification obligations that arise from a change of activity, a change of financial year or a corporate restructuring.

Taxable income starts from the accounting profit prepared under the applicable accounting standards and is adjusted for the items the law treats differently, including exempt income, non-deductible expenditure, interest limitation rules and relief available for qualifying group transactions. Each adjustment needs its own schedule and its own authority.

Related-party transactions must be priced on an arm's length basis, and the documentation to support that position should exist before the return is filed rather than being assembled during an audit.

A free zone entity is not automatically outside corporate tax. The 0% treatment depends on qualifying as a qualifying free zone person, on earning qualifying income, and on meeting the substance and de minimis conditions in the law and its decisions. Income outside that definition is taxed at the standard rate.

We test the entity against each condition, map the revenue streams to qualifying and non-qualifying categories, and document the basis, because this allocation is the point most likely to be examined.

An FTA review tests the computation against the ledger and the contracts. The file we maintain for each client is built to answer three questions quickly: where the taxable income came from, why each adjustment was made, and how related-party pricing was determined.