Corporate tax, handled

UAE corporate tax is 9% on taxable profit above AED 375,000 and 0% below it — but the rate you actually pay depends on structure, not address. Every taxable person registers, including free zone companies claiming 0%; late registration alone carries a fixed AED 10,000 penalty. Returns fall due within nine months of financial-year end. We run corporate tax end to end — registration, computation, filing and QFZP review — under the same rules as our own entity.

The rules in one paragraph each

Rate: 0% on taxable profit up to AED 375,000, 9% above. There is no separate offshore rate and no free-zone exemption written into the address — the law taxes the person, and the person qualifies for 0% only through a specific route.

Registration: mandatory for every taxable person — including 0%-claiming free zone companies — with a fixed AED 10,000 penalty for lateness. Filing: one return within nine months of financial-year end, built on records that survive scrutiny; the return is also where every relief is claimed.

QFZP: free zone companies keep 0% on qualifying income only while every condition holds — adequate substance in the zone, audited statements, transfer-pricing compliance, and non-qualifying revenue inside the de-minimis limit (the lower of AED 5M or 5% of total revenue). Break one and the standard regime applies for the whole period. Small Business Relief: resident businesses with revenue ≤ AED 3M per period can elect to be treated as having no taxable income at all — available through periods ending 31 December 2026, a genuine gift with a printed expiry date.

Who must register, and by when

Registration is not a judgement call. Every taxable person — mainland company, free zone company, and a natural person carrying on business above the turnover threshold — needs a corporate tax registration number, whether the eventual rate is 9%, 0% under a relief, or 0% because profit sits below AED 375,000. The Federal Tax Authority sets deadlines, and the fixed AED 10,000 late-registration penalty applies even when no tax was ever due.

A dormant company holding a live licence is not outside the net; it is inside it with zero revenue and the same penalty exposure. If the licence is alive, the default answer to "should we register?" is yes — the exemptions are narrow, specific, and worth confirming in writing rather than assuming.

The 0% question: three legal doors

The rate you actually pay is a function of structure, not marketing. Three legal routes hold profit at 0%. The first is the threshold: every taxable person pays 0% on the first AED 375,000 of profit, automatically. For a lean service business, that alone can mean no tax in the early years.

The second is Small Business Relief — a resident election that treats you as having no taxable income while revenue stays at or below AED 3M, through periods ending 31 December 2026. The third is QFZP for free zone companies. We map all three, and the standard ways each is lost, in our guide on who still pays 0%.

QFZP in practice: keeping the 0%

0% in a free zone is a status you maintain, not a birthright. The conditions are cumulative and continuous: real substance in the zone (people, premises and spend proportionate to the income claimed), audited financial statements, transfer-pricing documentation where related parties transact, and non-qualifying revenue held inside the de-minimis limit — the lower of AED 5M or 5% of total revenue.

The common failure is not dramatic. Non-qualifying mainland revenue drifts past the de-minimis line mid-year while nobody reconciles monthly, and the whole period reverts to the standard regime. That is a bookkeeping problem before it is a tax one — which is why the 0% claim and the accounting are the same job.

Filing, records and penalties

One return is due within nine months of your financial-year end — for a calendar year ending 31 December, that means the following 30 September. Corporate tax in the UAE is self-assessed: you compute, you file, and you keep the records that back the numbers for the period the law requires. There is no payment separate from the position on your return, so the computation is the whole game.

Penalties are fixed and indifferent to intent. Late registration is AED 10,000; late or missing filings and payment failures carry their own schedule. Because reliefs are claimed on the return, a missed filing costs twice — the penalty, plus the 0% relief you were entitled to but never elected.

Where corporate tax meets VAT and e-invoicing

Corporate tax does not run on its own ledger. It shares books with VAT — mandatory above AED 375,000 of taxable supplies, voluntary from AED 187,500 — and with mandatory e-invoicing, which begins phasing in from July 2026. The same invoice discipline that satisfies one satisfies the others.

For groups, note the ceiling: large multinational groups with consolidated revenue at or above EUR 750M fall under the 15% Domestic Minimum Top-up Tax, a separate regime from the 9% headline rate. Most owner-run UAE companies never touch it, but it is the reason "9% is the maximum" is not quite true at the top.

What we do

Registration and deadline management; annual computation and return filing; QFZP qualification review in writing — which income qualifies, where the de-minimis line sits for your mix, what substance the zone expects; and transfer-pricing documentation where related-party flows exist. Run your own scenarios first in the corporate tax calculator, then bring the edge cases to us.

We put positions in writing with references, and we keep your books in a state where the 0% claim can actually be defended. Where residency and substance overlap — the corporate side of a tax residency position — we plan both layers together. When a structure is aggressive, we say so and price the risk in plain terms rather than nodding it through, because we run our own entity under exactly these rules.

Service & reference

Straight answers