Corporate Tax in the UAE

Corporate tax is a federal tax on business profits. It is imposed by Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 on the Taxation of Corporations and Businesses, administered by the Federal Tax Authority (FTA), and it applies across all seven emirates — Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and the rest are governed by the same federal law and the same rates. There is no separate Dubai corporate tax and no separate Abu Dhabi corporate tax.

The tax falls on a Taxable Person, which Article 11 defines as a Resident Person or a Non-Resident Person. A resident juridical person is taxed on its worldwide income; a non-resident is taxed on income attributable to a Permanent Establishment in the UAE, on State Sourced Income, or on income attributable to a nexus in the UAE.

Individuals are only inside the regime when they run a business. Cabinet Decision No. 49 of 2023 provides that a natural person is subject to corporate tax only where turnover from business or business activities exceeds AED 1,000,000 in a Gregorian calendar year. Wages, personal investment income and real estate investment income are excluded from that test regardless of amount — so a salaried employee in the UAE pays no corporate tax on salary, and there is still no personal income tax.

Foreign ownership makes no difference. A company owned by non-UAE nationals is taxed exactly as a UAE-owned company is; residency for corporate tax purposes turns on where the entity is incorporated or effectively managed and controlled, not on the nationality of its shareholders.

Article 3 of the Corporate Tax Law sets two rates and leaves the threshold to the Cabinet. Cabinet Decision No. 116 of 2022 fixes that threshold at AED 375,000: taxable income up to and including AED 375,000 is taxed at 0%, and the amount above it is taxed at 9%.

The threshold is a band, not a cliff. A company with AED 500,000 of taxable income pays 9% on AED 125,000 — AED 11,250 — not 9% of the whole figure. Taxable income starts from accounting profit per financial statements prepared under accounting standards accepted in the UAE, then is adjusted under Article 20 for exempt income, non-deductible expenditure under Article 33, interest limitation rules under Articles 30 and 31, transfer pricing adjustments under Article 34 and tax losses.

Two further rates sit alongside the headline pair. A Qualifying Free Zone Person pays 0% on Qualifying Income and 9% on income that is not Qualifying Income. And Article 3(3), added by Federal Decree-Law No. 60 of 2023 and implemented by Cabinet Decision No. 142 of 2024, imposes a Top-up Tax so that large multinational groups reach a 15% effective rate in the UAE. This is the UAE's Domestic Minimum Top-up Tax (DMTT), the UAE's implementation of the OECD Pillar Two rules. It applies to multinational groups with consolidated annual revenue of EUR 750 million or more in at least two of the four preceding fiscal years, for financial years starting on or after 1 January 2025. It does not touch ordinary UAE businesses.

Registration is mandatory for every taxable person, including companies whose profit is below AED 375,000 and free zone companies expecting to pay 0%. Article 51 requires a taxable person to register and obtain a Tax Registration Number within the timeline prescribed by the FTA; being under the threshold is not an exemption from registering.

The timeline is set by FTA Decision No. 3 of 2024, effective 1 March 2024. For a UAE juridical person that already existed before that date, the deadline depended on the month its licence was issued, irrespective of the year of issue — and where a company held more than one licence, the earliest issuance date governed. Those dates have all now passed, which is why so many businesses are dealing with a late registration penalty rather than a live deadline.

For entities formed on or after 1 March 2024 the rule is simpler: three months from the date of incorporation, establishment or recognition, including free zone entities. A foreign-incorporated company that is effectively managed and controlled in the UAE has three months from the end of its financial year. A non-resident with a permanent establishment created after 1 March 2024 has six months from the date the PE came into existence; one with a nexus has three months from the date the nexus was established.

Applications are made through EmaraTax, the FTA's online portal — the answer to searches for a corporate tax login is that there is no separate corporate tax portal, only the EmaraTax account under which VAT, excise and corporate tax all sit. Registration through EmaraTax is a self-service application and the FTA does not publish a government charge for submitting it; any fee quoted by a firm is that firm's professional fee, not a tax. Confirm the current FTA service fee schedule on tax.gov.ae before relying on this.

There is one return per tax period and it is filed on EmaraTax. Article 53(1) requires it no later than nine months from the end of the relevant tax period, and Article 48 gives the same nine-month deadline for settling the corporate tax payable. There is no separate advance payment or instalment regime: the filing date and the payment date are the same date.

For a company with a calendar financial year, a tax period of 1 January to 31 December 2025 gives a filing and payment deadline of 30 September 2026. A company with a 30 June year end has until 31 March of the following year. A first tax period that runs from 1 June 2023 for a June-to-May year end had a deadline of 28 February 2025. The single reliable way to work out your own date is to take your financial year end and add nine months.

The UAE does not publish a downloadable paper return form or an Excel template. The return is completed in the EmaraTax interface, drawing on the financial statements, so requests for a corporate tax return format in PDF or Excel do not have an official answer — what the FTA publishes instead is the Corporate Tax Return guide describing each schedule and field.

There is no general extension mechanism. Article 53 allows the FTA to direct another date, and the law lets the Authority set different timelines in specific cases, but a taxable person cannot apply for extra time the way it might in other jurisdictions. Plan the audit and the return around the nine-month date rather than expecting relief from it.

Free zone companies are not outside corporate tax. They are taxable persons, they must register, and they must file. What a free zone can offer is a 0% rate on Qualifying Income, and only for a Free Zone Person that meets every condition in Article 18.

Those conditions are: maintaining adequate substance in the UAE; deriving Qualifying Income as specified by the Cabinet; not having elected under Article 19 to be taxed at the standard rates; complying with the arm's length principle in Article 34 and the transfer pricing documentation requirement in Article 55; and meeting any further conditions the Minister prescribes. Ministerial Decision No. 229 of 2025 adds two: the de minimis test must be met, and audited financial statements must be prepared under Ministerial Decision No. 84 of 2025.

Qualifying Income is defined by Cabinet Decision No. 100 of 2023 and the activity lists are in Ministerial Decision No. 229 of 2025, which took effect on 1 June 2023 and repealed Ministerial Decision No. 265 of 2023. Qualifying Activities include manufacturing and processing of goods, trading of Qualifying Commodities, holding shares and securities for investment, ownership and operation of ships, reinsurance, fund management, wealth and investment management, headquarter services to related parties, treasury and financing services to related parties, aircraft financing and leasing, distribution of goods in or from a Designated Zone, logistics services, and activities ancillary to those. Excluded Activities include transactions with natural persons (with narrow carve-outs), banking, insurance, finance and leasing, and the ownership or exploitation of immovable property other than commercial property in a free zone transacted with another free zone person.

The de minimis rule gives a margin for incidental non-qualifying revenue: under Article 3 of Ministerial Decision No. 229 of 2025 it is satisfied where non-qualifying revenue does not exceed 5% of total revenue or AED 5,000,000, whichever is lower. Breach it and the consequences are severe — Article 5(2) of that decision provides that a person failing the conditions ceases to be a Qualifying Free Zone Person from the beginning of the relevant tax period and for the following four tax periods.

No free zone is a "qualifying free zone" in its own right. DMCC, JAFZA, DIFC, ADGM and the rest are Free Zones for the purposes of the law, but qualifying status is tested entity by entity against Article 18. A DMCC company doing excluded work is taxed at 9%; a DMCC company doing qualifying work with adequate substance is taxed at 0% on that income.

Exemption and relief are different things. Article 4 lists Exempt Persons — government entities, government controlled entities, businesses engaged in extractive and non-extractive natural resource activity taxed at emirate level, qualifying public benefit entities listed by Cabinet decision, qualifying investment funds, and certain pension and social security funds. Most of those still have to notify or register with the FTA to have the exemption recognised. Everyone else is a taxable person and reaches a lower bill through reliefs, not through exemption.

The penalty schedule is not in the Corporate Tax Law. It is in Cabinet Decision No. 75 of 2023, in force from 1 August 2023, as amended by Cabinet Decision No. 10 of 2024 from 1 March 2024. Penalties are assessed automatically by EmaraTax and appear in the taxable person's account, which is where you check whether a fine has been raised against you — there is no separate public register of corporate tax fines.

The two that catch most businesses are the AED 10,000 late registration penalty and the escalating late filing penalty of AED 500 per month for the first twelve months and AED 1,000 per month thereafter. Late payment is charged separately at 14% per annum, calculated monthly on the unsettled tax.

On waivers: in April 2025 the FTA introduced an initiative under which the AED 10,000 late registration penalty is waived, and refunded where already paid, if the taxable person files its first tax return — or its first annual declaration, for exempt persons required to register — within seven months from the end of its first tax period rather than the usual nine. The relief is tied to each taxpayer's own first tax period, not to a single calendar date, and applies to the first tax period only. Separately, Article 50 of the Tax Procedures Law allows a committee at the FTA to approve instalments, or a full or partial waiver or refund, of administrative penalties under controls issued by Cabinet decision. That is a discretionary route with published controls, not a form letter, and there is no official "penalty waiver template" to download.

Where an error is found in a return already filed, a voluntary disclosure is the mechanism to correct it. Submitting one carries a 1% monthly penalty on the tax difference; failing to submit one before the FTA notifies an audit carries a fixed 15% of the tax difference plus the 1% monthly charge. Disclosing early is materially cheaper than being found.

The primary text is Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022, amended by Federal Decree-Law No. 60 of 2023 (which added the top-up tax clause), Federal Decree-Law No. 40 of 2024, and Federal Decree-Law No. 28 of 2025 (issued 1 October 2025, effective 15 October 2025), which rewrote Article 44 on the calculation and settlement of corporate tax and inserted a new Article 49 bis allowing unused tax credits arising from incentives and reliefs to be claimed.

The Ministry of Finance publishes a consolidated English PDF of the law with all amendments folded in, and the FTA maintains the full legislation library of Cabinet Decisions, Ministerial Decisions and FTA Decisions. Both are free downloads from the government sites and both are the version you should cite. Anything described as a corporate tax handbook, bare act or book PDF circulating elsewhere is a third-party compilation, and the article numbering in older copies predates the 2023, 2024 and 2025 amendments.

Corporate tax, VAT and excise tax are three separate federal taxes with separate laws, separate registrations and separate returns, all administered by the same authority through the same EmaraTax account.

VAT, under Federal Decree-Law No. 8 of 2017, is a consumption tax at a standard rate of 5% charged on supplies of goods and services. The business collects it from customers and remits the net amount, so it is not a cost to a fully taxable business — it is cash flow and compliance. Returns are filed periodically, by the 28th day following the end of each VAT tax period.

Corporate tax is a tax on profit. It is not charged to customers, it is not recoverable, and it is filed once a year rather than quarterly or monthly. A company can easily be registered for one and not the other: VAT registration is mandatory above AED 375,000 of taxable supplies while voluntary registration starts at AED 187,500, whereas corporate tax registration is mandatory for a taxable person irrespective of turnover.

Excise tax, under Federal Decree-Law No. 7 of 2017, is a narrow tax on specific goods considered harmful to health or the environment and only concerns businesses that import, produce or stockpile those goods. Its rates, product categories and return format are outside the scope of this page; the FTA publishes them on its excise tax pages.

The FTA maintains a public register of Tax Agents. A tax agent is a person approved and registered by the FTA under the Tax Procedures Law who may be appointed to represent a taxable person before the Authority. That is a formal, verifiable status, and it is worth checking on tax.gov.ae before appointing anyone: the words "tax consultant", "tax advisor" and "corporate tax expert" carry no licensing meaning on their own, whereas "registered tax agent" does.

Appointing an agent does not transfer liability. Article 51 of the Tax Procedures Law places the burden of proving the accuracy of a tax return on the taxable person, and penalties for late filing and late payment are assessed against the business, not its adviser. The exception is narrow: where a legal representative fails to notify their appointment or to file on time, items 5 and 6 of Cabinet Decision No. 75 of 2023 make those penalties payable from the representative's own funds.

Fees are not set by the FTA and vary with the complexity of the entity, whether an audit is required, whether the entity is claiming QFZP status, and whether transfer pricing documentation is needed. There is no official price list, and any figure presented as a standard government charge for filing should be treated with suspicion — the tax itself is the only amount payable to the FTA.

For those wanting to build the knowledge internally rather than buy it, corporate tax training is offered by professional bodies and private providers in the UAE. The FTA publishes its own free e-learning modules and detailed corporate tax guides covering determination of taxable income, free zone persons, tax groups and transfer pricing; those guides are the authoritative starting point and cost nothing.