Guide
UAE corporate tax registration and filing deadlines
Updated
Registration is not means-tested. A business with no tax to pay still registers, still files, and still keeps the records that prove why no tax was due.
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How this calculator works
- Article 3 of the Corporate Tax Law imposes corporate tax at 0% on the portion of taxable income not exceeding the amount set by Cabinet decision. It imposes 9% on taxable income above it (Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022).
- That amount is AED 375,000, fixed by Cabinet Decision No. 116 of 2022, and it applies once per taxable person for the tax period whether or not the person carries on several businesses (Ministry of Finance). Splitting a business artificially to multiply the threshold is treated as a corporate tax advantage under the general anti-abuse rule.
- Small Business Relief treats an eligible resident person as having derived no taxable income. It applies where revenue is AED 3,000,000 or less in the relevant tax period and in every previous tax period.
- It must be elected in the tax return. A Qualifying Free Zone Person, or a member of a multinational group with consolidated revenue above AED 3.15 billion, cannot elect it (Federal Tax Authority).
- Small Business Relief has an end date. The Ministry of Finance states that the AED 3 million revenue threshold applies to tax periods starting on or after 1 June 2023. It says the threshold will only continue to apply to subsequent tax periods that end before or on 31 December 2026 (Ministry of Finance).
- Check the position for any tax period ending after that date before relying on the relief.
- For a Qualifying Free Zone Person, Article 3(2) charges 0% on Qualifying Income and 9% on taxable income that is not Qualifying Income. The AED 375,000 threshold sits in Article 3(1) and is not repeated in Article 3(2), so the calculator applies no 0% band to a free zone person's non-qualifying income.
- Where Small Business Relief is elected, other exemptions, reliefs and deductions are not available for that tax period, and losses and disallowed net interest expenditure are affected. The calculator shows tax of nil and does not model those consequences.
- Large multinational groups face a separate charge: the UAE domestic minimum top-up tax, using a minimum rate of 15% (Ministry of Finance, Cabinet Decision No. 142 of 2024). This calculator does not model it.
- The top-up tax applies to members of groups with annual global revenues of EUR 750 million or more in at least two of the four preceding financial years. It covers financial years starting on or after 1 January 2025.
- The calculator starts from taxable income you supply. Arriving at taxable income from accounting profit is the hard part of a UAE corporate tax computation and involves exempt income, interest limitation, transfer pricing and other adjustments.
Who registers
All taxable persons, including free zone persons, are required to register for corporate tax and obtain a corporate tax registration number. The Federal Tax Authority may also require certain exempt persons to register (Ministry of Finance). Registration, return submission and payment run through the Authority's EmaraTax platform.
The nine month rule
A taxable person must file a corporate tax return for each tax period within nine months from the end of that period. The same deadline generally applies to paying any tax due.
The Authority applied that in August 2026: taxpayers whose financial year ended on 31 December 2025 had to submit and settle no later than 30 September 2026.
| Financial year ends | Return and payment due |
|---|---|
| 31 December 2025 | 30 September 2026 |
| 31 March 2026 | 31 December 2026 |
| 30 June 2026 | 31 March 2027 |
| 31 December 2026 | 30 September 2027 |
Records
The Authority expects records that let it verify revenue, taxable income and any relief claimed. For a business electing Small Business Relief that means evidence that revenue has not exceeded the threshold across the relevant and all previous tax periods, not just the current one.
Self-assessment
Corporate tax is calculated by the taxable person on a self-assessment basis. The starting point is accounting profit or loss before tax per the financial statements, adjusted for exempt income and for expenditure that is wholly or partly non-deductible. Those adjustments, not the rate, are where a computation goes wrong.
Deadlines above are calculated from the nine month rule and the Authority's own worked case. Confirm your own dates in EmaraTax, because tax periods and financial years do not always coincide.