UAE Corporate Tax — deadlines and penalties.
Three months to register, nine months to file the first return. The AED 10,000 penalty and the FTA waiver extended to July 2026. The deadline rules and where founders most often slip.
The two deadlines that matter
UAE Corporate Tax (CT) is administered by the Federal Tax Authority under Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022, as amended. Every taxable person — every UAE-incorporated company, branch of a foreign company, and certain natural persons carrying out business — must:
- Register for Corporate Tax via the EmaraTax portal. The deadline depends on the entity's incorporation date and category. For entities incorporated on or after 1 March 2024 the deadline is three months from the date of incorporation. Pre-existing entities had deadlines staggered through 2024 based on month of trade-licence issuance, all now elapsed.
- File the first Corporate Tax return within nine months of the end of the first tax period, with payment due by the same date.
The AED 10,000 late-registration penalty
Cabinet Decision No. 75 of 2023 sets out the administrative penalties for CT non-compliance. The penalty for failing to submit a CT registration application within the deadline is a fixed AED 10,000 (approximately USD 2,725). FTA Decision No. 7 of 2025 — extended by subsequent decisions through 2026 — provides that the penalty is waived where both the registration application and the first CT return are submitted within seven months of the end of the first tax period.
This waiver gives a meaningful grace period for entities that missed the original registration deadline, but the seven-month return-filing window is much tighter than the standard nine-month return deadline. Founders who incorporated in 2024 but did not register on time should treat the waiver as a hard deadline — file the registration and the first return together, well before the seven-month cliff.
Deadline table — what to file when
| Event | Deadline | Penalty if missed |
|---|---|---|
| CT registration (entities incorporated on or after 1 March 2024) | 3 months from incorporation | AED 10,000 |
| First CT return + payment | 9 months from end of first tax period | AED 500 first month + AED 1,000/month thereafter |
| Ongoing annual CT return + payment | 9 months from end of each tax period | AED 500 + AED 1,000/month |
| CT return amendment | Within 20 business days of becoming aware of error | AED 1,000–10,000 |
| Late payment of CT due | 14% per annum from due date | 14% pa interest + monthly penalty |
| Maintaining records | 7 years | AED 10,000–20,000 |
First tax period — how to identify it
A taxable person's first tax period begins on the date Corporate Tax becomes applicable to it and ends on the date of the entity's first audited financial year-end. For a UAE company incorporated on 1 July 2024 with a 31 December year-end, the first tax period is 1 July 2024 to 31 December 2024 (6 months). The first CT return is due 30 September 2025. The CT registration deadline is 1 October 2024.
Where an entity's first financial year is 12 months or fewer, the first tax period equals the financial year. Where the first financial year is longer than 12 months but no more than 18 months, the entity may treat the entire period as its first tax period. Beyond 18 months, the entity must split the period into a tax period and a stub.
Where founders most often go wrong
- Believing the free-zone status exempts them from CT registration. Even Qualifying Free Zone Persons claiming 0% must register. The exemption is from CT liability on qualifying income, not from registration.
- Missing the 3-month-from-incorporation registration deadline. The deadline is much shorter than the older transitional deadlines and is easy to overlook in the rush of post-incorporation operational set-up.
- Assuming the AED 10,000 penalty was repealed. It was not. The waiver is conditional on filing both registration and first return within seven months of the first tax-period end.
- Forgetting Small Business Relief is an election. If you want SBR, you must positively elect for it in your return. It is not automatic.
- Underestimating Voluntary Disclosure penalties. If you discover an error after filing, the Voluntary Disclosure regime under Cabinet Decision 74 of 2023 imposes percentage-based penalties on the unpaid tax — better than penalties for FTA-discovered errors, but still meaningful.
What ArxSetup includes
Corporate Tax registration is included as standard in our Operator (USD 5,800) and Private Office (from USD 9,500) retainers. For Founder-retainer clients we provide it as an add-on for USD 550 (single-shareholder entity, single tax period, no group). Annual CT returns are quoted at USD 3,500 per return for a standard single-entity filing; transfer-pricing-affected and group filings are quoted separately. All FTA-facing work is delivered through our affiliated FTA-registered tax-agent partners.