Your first corporate tax return: what the law actually requires

Corporate tax in the UAE comes from Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 on the Taxation of Corporations and Businesses. It applies to financial years beginning on or after 1 June 2023, which means a business on a January–December year first fell inside it for the year beginning 1 January 2024.

The rate is in the law; almost nothing else is

The decree-law sets a standard rate of 9% on taxable income, with 0% applying up to a threshold of AED 375,000. That much is on the face of the statute. Nearly everything that decides what your number is — how free-zone income qualifies, how small business relief is claimed, how groups are formed, how transfer pricing documentation is scoped — sits in Cabinet Decisions and Ministerial Decisions issued afterwards, and those are amended more often than the law is.

This is the single most common mistake we see: a business reads the decree-law, satisfies itself that it understands its position, and never checks the implementing decisions that changed it.

Registration is separate from paying

Registration is not conditional on owing anything. A business inside the scope of the law registers whether or not it expects taxable income above the threshold, and the registration deadlines are set by licence issuance date. A company that concludes it will pay nothing and therefore does nothing is exposed to a penalty for the failure to register, independently of the tax.

What to do before you file

• Fix your financial year, in writing, and check which return period it puts you in.
• Confirm your registration status directly on the official tax portal rather than from memory.
• If you are in a free zone, read the qualifying income conditions as they currently stand — not as they were described when the regime was announced.
• Keep the working papers. The return is a number; the defence is the file behind it.

Where to read it

The decree-law and the decisions under it are published on the UAE Legislation platform and on the official tax portal. Open them. This article is an orientation, not an opinion, and your position depends on facts we do not have.