Since corporate tax arrived, "we'll sort the books later" became the most expensive sentence in the Emirates. We run FTA-ready books at published monthly rates — the same discipline we apply to our own entity.
UAE bookkeeping is now a tax obligation, not housekeeping. Corporate tax runs at 9% on profit above AED 375,000 and 0% below, every taxable person must file, VAT registration is mandatory over AED 375,000 turnover, and structured e-invoicing phases in from July 2026. Even a free zone company on 0% keeps that rate only with audited books. We keep FTA-ready books at published monthly rates — and run our own UAE entity under exactly these rules, so the calendar we manage for you is the calendar we live.
Every taxable person must register for corporate tax and file a return — including free zone companies claiming 0%, whose QFZP status explicitly depends on audited financial statements and transfer-pricing discipline. Corporate tax runs at 9% on profit above AED 375,000 and 0% below, but the rate is meaningless without books that prove which side of that line your profit sits on.
Add VAT — mandatory once taxable turnover passes AED 375,000, voluntary from AED 187,500 — and structured e-invoicing phasing in from July 2026, and bookkeeping stopped being optional hygiene. Three separate filings now read from one ledger, so the ledger is the product.
The FTA's penalty schedule makes the point in dirhams: late registrations and late filings carry fixed fines that routinely exceed a year of decent bookkeeping. Cheap chaos is not cheap.
FTA-ready is not a folder of receipts. It means IFRS-based records kept monthly, a chart of accounts mapped to how the corporate tax return is actually computed, VAT input and output tax tracked at invoice level, and year-end files an auditor can sign without a scramble. The test is simple: if the FTA asked tomorrow, could you produce the number and the trail behind it in days rather than weeks?
The distinction that trips people is profit versus revenue. The AED 375,000 threshold and the corporate tax computation run on profit; the VAT and QFZP de-minimis tests run on revenue. Books that blur the two — or live only in a spreadsheet nobody reconciles — cannot answer either question cleanly.
Once you are registered, you are on a fixed rhythm, and missing a date is not a judgment call — the fines are automatic. The point of the table below is that every line reads from the same monthly books.
| Obligation | Threshold / trigger | Typical cadence |
|---|---|---|
| Corporate tax return | Every taxable person, above and below AED 375,000 profit | Once per financial year, within 9 months of period end |
| VAT return | Mandatory over AED 375,000 turnover (voluntary from AED 187,500) | Quarterly (some monthly) |
| Payroll / WPS | Any company with employees | Monthly salary transfer via WPS |
| Audited financial statements | QFZP status and zones or sizes that require it | Annually |
| E-invoicing | Phased in from July 2026 by company size | Per invoice, in real time |
Model the corporate tax line in our corporate tax calculator; keeping every other line correct is the monthly bookkeeping the calculator assumes.
Monthly IFRS bookkeeping in cloud software you can see (Zoho, Xero, QuickBooks — your call), with you holding owner access. Payroll with WPS where staff exist, and end-of-service gratuity accrued rather than discovered when someone resigns. VAT returns prepared and filed, corporate tax computed and filed, and audit-ready year-end files for the zones and statuses that require an audit.
One monthly figure, published below, adjusted only when volume genuinely changes. Where you need only the ledger without the filings, our bookkeeping service is the narrower engagement; the corporate tax and VAT filings run on the very same books, so nothing is entered twice.
The single most expensive misunderstanding we correct is that a free zone licence delivers 0% by itself. It does not — a Qualifying Free Zone Person keeps 0% on qualifying income only with adequate substance, audited accounts, transfer-pricing documentation, and non-qualifying revenue held below the de-minimis limit, the lower of AED 5M or 5% of total revenue. Cross that line unnoticed and the whole period drops to 9%, for that year and the following four.
Every one of those conditions is monitored in the books, not the licence. The common leak is mainland revenue drifting past de-minimis while nobody reconciles monthly. Which door keeps you at 0% — the threshold, Small Business Relief, or QFZP — is worked through in our guide on who still really pays 0%; keeping it is a monthly reconciliation.
Handovers from shoebox accounting are routine for us. We rebuild backlogs quarter by quarter at a quoted fixed price, working from bank statements, and we tell you plainly which periods are reconstructible from records and which are estimates that must be disclosed as such. The FTA distinguishes reconstructed figures from invented ones, and so do we.
One published monthly figure, listed below, moves only when transaction volume genuinely changes — no surprise line items, no "establishment file" appearing three months in. You hold owner access to the accounting software throughout, so the books are yours to take if you ever leave; we decline the industry habit of holding client records hostage in the accountant's own system.
We run our own UAE entity under exactly these rules — same corporate tax return, same VAT filings, same audit. The calendar we manage for you is the calendar we live, which is the only endorsement of a bookkeeping process that means anything.
We reply with numbers — a line-by-line setup estimate for your case. Not a call script, not a brochure.