UAE VAT Registration & FTA Filings

Mandatory registration is triggered once taxable supplies and taxable imports in the previous 12 months exceed AED 375,000, or once you reasonably expect to exceed that threshold in the next 30 days. The 12-month test is rolling, not calendar-year — it looks back on any 12 consecutive months.

Voluntary registration is available from AED 187,500 of taxable supplies (or taxable expenses). For most B2B businesses invoicing UAE-registered clients, voluntary registration below the mandatory threshold is worthwhile: your clients recover the VAT you charge, and you recover input VAT on your own costs.

Non-resident businesses making any taxable supplies in the UAE — including e-commerce sellers, SaaS platforms and digital-service providers — must register from the first taxable transaction. There is no threshold. This catches out international sellers who assume UAE VAT works like US sales tax.

Step 1 — Documentation. We collect trade licence(s), Memorandum of Association, passport and Emirates ID copies of shareholders and authorised signatory, proof of business address, and 12-month financials or a projection showing when the threshold is crossed.

Step 2 — EmaraTax filing. As registered tax agents we file the VAT registration application through the FTA's EmaraTax portal, uploading supporting documentation and answering the FTA's activity-classification questions. Most applications receive an FTA response within 20 working days.

Step 3 — TRN issuance and system setup. Once the FTA issues your Tax Registration Number (TRN), we set up your accounting system to issue VAT-compliant tax invoices — the FTA requires specific fields on the face of every invoice, and getting this wrong is the most common reason for input VAT recovery to be denied at audit.

Being in a Free Zone does not exempt you from VAT — every Free Zone entity making taxable supplies above the threshold must register and file. What changes is the VAT treatment of specific transactions, particularly those involving Designated Zones.

A Designated Zone is a Free Zone that the UAE Cabinet has specifically designated for VAT purposes (JAFZA, DAFZA, ADAFZ, and others). Supplies of goods between Designated Zones are outside the scope of UAE VAT — supplies of services are not, regardless of the Designated Zone status. Confusing goods and services treatment here is the single most expensive VAT mistake we see Free Zone businesses make.

Free Zone entities also need to be aware of the reverse-charge mechanism on imports from outside the UAE and on services received from non-resident suppliers. We map every recurring supplier onto the correct VAT treatment at onboarding.

Most businesses file VAT returns quarterly, with the return and payment due 28 days after the end of the tax period. Larger businesses (typically above AED 150 million turnover) file monthly. The FTA assigns your tax period at registration and can change it later.

The return is filed through EmaraTax, and once submitted the underlying records must be retained for at least five years (fifteen years for real estate). Records include tax invoices issued and received, credit notes, import documentation, and reconciliation working papers that tie the return to your general ledger.

Since 2024 the FTA has significantly stepped up desk-audit activity, particularly around input VAT recovery, related-party transactions and Free Zone treatment. Clean, timely record-keeping is no longer optional — a poorly-documented return is now the most common trigger for a formal audit.

Since June 2023, UAE Corporate Tax at 9% applies to profits above AED 375,000 for most UAE entities. Registration is mandatory for every taxable person — including Free Zone entities benefiting from a 0% Qualifying Free Zone Person rate.

The two regimes share underlying accounting records but ask different questions. VAT is transaction-by-transaction; Corporate Tax is annual and profit-based. Reconciling the two — making sure taxable revenue on the VAT returns ties to accounting revenue in the Corporate Tax computation — is the fastest way to spot both errors and legitimate reliefs before an FTA reviewer does.

We run VAT and Corporate Tax as a single engagement so the numbers tie, the same team owns FTA correspondence for both, and Free Zone qualifying-income analysis is done once — not twice with two different answers.