Your First Tax Period Is Not Your First Calendar Year, And Getting It Wrong Moves Your Registration, Your Return And Your Small Business Relief All At Once

Your UAE Corporate Tax return and the payment that goes with it are due within nine months from the end of your tax period [1][2]. Read that again, because the whole of this guide sits inside it. The deadline is not a fixed national date. It is calculated from one input, and that input is the day your tax period ends.

Which means if you have the wrong period end in your head, every date that follows it is wrong too. Not slightly wrong. A business that assumes a December year end when its documents say 31 March has a deadline that is three months out. A business that assumes its year runs from its incorporation date has a deadline that can be off by almost anything.

Since 2013, BusinessDubai.ae has registered companies across Dubai and the northern emirates and taken hundreds of them through their first Corporate Tax cycle. This guide covers what actually determines your first tax period, why it is often not twelve months, how the period end moves your deadline, and the three downstream decisions it quietly controls.

What actually determines your first tax period?

Short answer: the financial year written into your constitutional documents, not the date on your incorporation certificate and not the calendar.

This is the single correction that fixes most of the confusion. Corporate Tax is charged by reference to a tax period, and the tax period follows the financial year the company uses to prepare its financial statements. Your financial year is a matter of record. It is written into your memorandum of association or your articles, and in most UAE incorporations somebody chose it, often without discussing it with you, on the day the documents were drafted.

The incorporation date does something narrower. It tells you when the company came into existence, so it tells you when the first period starts. It does not tell you when the first period ends. The financial year clause does that.

Common Mistake: Saying "we incorporated in March, so our year is March to March." Incorporating in March tells you nothing about your year end. Plenty of companies incorporated in March have a 31 December financial year end and a first tax period of roughly nine and a half months. Plenty have a 31 March year end and a first period of roughly twelve and a half. The paperwork decides, and the paperwork is sitting in a folder you have not opened since setup.

The practical instruction is unglamorous and takes ten minutes. Open your memorandum of association. Find the clause on the financial year. Write the date down. If you cannot find it, or the clause is ambiguous, that is itself the finding, and it needs resolving before your first return rather than after.

Not sure what your incorporation documents actually say about your financial year? Talk to a setup expert→

Why can the first period be longer or shorter than twelve months?

Short answer: because it runs from the day the company existed to the first financial year end in its documents, and that gap is almost never exactly twelve months.

Every period after the first one is a clean twelve months, running year end to year end. The first one is the odd one, because the company did not exist on the day the previous year ended. It starts partway through.

That produces first periods of wildly different lengths depending on how far your incorporation date sits from your year end.

Look at rows four and five. A company set up in the last weeks of a calendar year with a 31 December year end has a first tax period measured in weeks. That is a real first period, with a real return, and a real deadline nine months after it closes. Founders in that position routinely assume their first return covers their first proper trading year and file nothing at all for the stub.

Real Talk: Where the first period is very short or unusually long, do not decide the treatment yourself and do not let a bookkeeper decide it by how they set up the software. Confirm with the Federal Tax Authority, or with an adviser who will put the answer in writing, how your specific first period should be drawn. This is the one part of the exercise where a plausible assumption is worse than an unanswered question, because you will build a registration date, a filing date and a relief claim on top of it.

Pro Tip: Whatever the answer is, record it once in a one page memo: date of establishment, financial year end clause and where it appears in the documents, first period start, first period end, filing deadline. Every future argument about dates gets settled by that page. Our post-setup services team produces exactly this at the point of registration, because reconstructing it two years later from bank statements and a licence copy is considerably harder than writing it down on day one.

How does your period end move your filing deadline?

Short answer: the nine months runs from the period end, so a different end date is a different deadline, and there is no shared UAE tax day.

The return and the payment are both due within nine months from the end of the tax period [1][2]. Both, on the same date. The arithmetic is simple once you have the right starting point, which is the entire problem.

Quick Math: Two companies incorporated on the same day in March 2026, one with a 31 December year end and one with a 31 March year end. The first files by 30 September 2027. The second files by 31 December 2027. Three months apart, same founder, same accountant, same industry, and the only difference is a clause neither of them read. If you own both companies and assume they share a deadline, one of them is late.

Everything about what goes into that return, what supporting documents the Federal Tax Authority expects, how the submission works and what happens when you miss the date is covered in our UAE Corporate Tax filing requirements guide. This guide deliberately stops at the date, because the date is what people get wrong before they get anything else wrong.

When do you have to register, and is that the same clock?

Short answer: no, and confusing the two is the second most common error in this whole area.

Corporate Tax registration and Corporate Tax filing run on different clocks and answer to different facts.

Filing is keyed to your tax period end. Nine months, measured from that date [1][2].

Registration is keyed to the entity itself, and the Federal Tax Authority sets registration timelines by category of person and by when the entity was established. There is a distinct treatment for persons established on or after 1 March 2024, and the window that applies to a company incorporated after that date is not something you should infer from your financial year, from your licence issue date, or from what a founder in a WhatsApp group told you about their own company.

We are deliberately not printing a table of registration windows here. They vary by category, and the authoritative timetable is the Federal Tax Authority's own. Confirm the window that applies to your entity directly with the FTA, or have your adviser confirm it in writing. If you are already past it, that is a conversation to have now rather than at the point of filing.

Two things are settled and worth stating plainly.

Registration is required regardless of whether you will owe anything. A company that will pay zero, because its profit is under AED 375,000 or because it elects Small Business Relief, still registers and still files [1][3].

Registering does not fix your period. Registration records the entity. It does not retroactively make a wrongly assumed financial year correct.

Our EmaraTax portal guide covers the mechanics of the account and the submission itself. What it cannot do is tell you which dates to type in, which is the part you settle from your own constitutional documents.

Want the registration position checked against your actual incorporation documents rather than assumed? Check your eligibility→

Why does a misidentified first period break your Small Business Relief claim?

Short answer: because the AED 3,000,000 revenue test is applied to the current tax period and to all previous tax periods, so if your period boundaries are in the wrong place you are testing the wrong revenue against the wrong threshold.

Small Business Relief treats a business with revenue at or below AED 3,000,000 as having derived no taxable income for that period, on election [3][5]. Ministerial Decision No. 131 of 2026, issued on 29 July 2026, amended Ministerial Decision No. 73 of 2023 and extended the relief to tax periods ending on or before 31 December 2029, from a previous cut off of 2026 [3]. The enabling provision is Article 21 of Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 [6].

Two features of that test collide badly with a misidentified first period.

The test looks backwards as well as forwards. Revenue is tested for the relevant tax period and all previous tax periods [3][5]. If you have drawn the boundary between period one and period two in the wrong place, you have not just mislabelled a year. You have assigned revenue to the wrong side of a threshold test that never forgets.

Period length changes the revenue number. Revenue in a five month stub period is a different number from revenue in a twelve month year, and revenue in a twelve and a half month first period is different again. A business running at AED 280,000 of revenue a month is comfortably inside the threshold across five months at AED 1.4 million, and comfortably outside it across twelve at AED 3.36 million. Same business, same trading, different period boundary, opposite answer.

Revenue for this purpose is determined under IFRS or UAE GAAP [3][5], not under whatever the bank statement totals to, which is a separate trap covered in our guide to UAE accounting standards and IFRS.

Quick Math: A consultancy invoices AED 3.2 million in its first eighteen months of trading. If its first tax period is a nine month stub ending 31 December, the stub revenue might be AED 1.5 million and the following full year AED 1.7 million, so both periods sit under AED 3 million and both can elect. If instead the whole eighteen months is treated as one long first period, revenue in that single period is AED 3.2 million, the threshold is breached, and because the test considers the current period and every previous one, the breach follows the company into later periods too. Nothing about the business changed. Only the boundary did.

The full conditions, exclusions and the anti-abuse position on splitting a business are covered in our Small Business Relief guide. Artificial separation of a business to stay under the threshold engages the general anti-abuse rule in Article 50 of the Corporate Tax Law, so this is emphatically not an invitation to redraw boundaries for advantage [3][6]. It is an instruction to get the real boundary right.

Does your financial year end decide how much relief you can reach?

Short answer: yes, and a 31 March year end reaches one fewer eligible period than a 31 December one, which is worth real money.

The relief runs to tax periods ending on or before 31 December 2029 [3]. That is a hard edge, and where your year end falls relative to it decides how many bites you get.

A 31 December company's last eligible period closes on 31 December 2029. A 31 March company's last eligible period closes on 31 March 2029, because the next one closes on 31 March 2030, which is after the cut off. That is nine months of eligible trading that simply does not exist for the March company.

Quick Math: Take a business with taxable profit of AED 700,000 in a period. Under the standard regime it pays 0% on the first AED 375,000 and 9% on the remaining AED 325,000, which is AED 29,250 [1]. Small Business Relief takes that to nil. One extra eligible period at that profit level is worth AED 29,250. At AED 1,000,000 of taxable profit the same single period is worth AED 56,250. That is the price of a year end clause, and nobody discussed it with you when the documents were drafted.

What happens to a loss made in your first period?

Short answer: it depends entirely on whether you elected Small Business Relief in the period the loss arose, and the two halves of that rule point in opposite directions.

This matters most in the first tax period, because the first period is the one most likely to be loss making. Setup costs, licence fees, premises, hiring and no revenue history all land in the same window.

Under Article 4 of Ministerial Decision No. 73 of 2023 [4]:

• A tax loss incurred in a tax period where you elect Small Business Relief cannot be carried forward to any subsequent tax period. It is permanently lost. Article 4(1).
• Unutilised tax losses from earlier periods where you did not elect may be carried forward, but only into subsequent periods in which you again do not elect, subject to Article 37 of the Corporate Tax Law. Article 4(2).

Article 5 mirrors the same structure for net interest expenditure. Net interest incurred in an electing period cannot be carried forward, Article 5(1). Unutilised net interest from earlier non-electing periods survives into later non-electing periods, subject to Article 30 of the Corporate Tax Law, Article 5(2) [4].

Common Mistake: Electing Small Business Relief in a loss making first period because the election is free and the tax is zero either way. It is not free. You pay zero tax on a loss whether you elect or not. Electing converts a loss you could have carried into your first profitable year into nothing at all [4]. The founder who elects on autopilot in year one and turns profitable in year three has bought a 0% rate on income that did not exist, at the price of an asset that would have been worth 9% of the loss against future profit.

Never take the flat claim that losses carry forward under Small Business Relief. Never take the flat claim that they do not. The rule has two halves, and which half applies to you depends on which period the loss arose in and whether you elected in that period.

Pro Tip: Make the elect or do not elect decision after your accounts are prepared, not as a policy set at incorporation. In a profitable period under the threshold, electing is usually straightforward. In a loss making period it is a modelling exercise, and the first tax period is disproportionately likely to be the loss making one.

Can you change your financial year?

Short answer: it is possible, it is not casual, and it is not done by changing a setting in your accounting software.

Changing a financial year is not a bookkeeping preference. It is a change to your constitutional documents, and it changes:

• Your tax period boundaries, which means one period becomes shorter or longer than twelve months to bridge the gap.
• Your filing deadline, because nine months is measured from the new period end [1][2].
• Your Small Business Relief window, because the cut off is fixed at periods ending on or before 31 December 2029 [3] while your period ends have just moved.
• Your revenue test, because a stub or extended period tests a different revenue figure against the same AED 3,000,000 threshold [3].
• Your accounts and any audit, because the comparatives no longer line up with a standard year.

The Federal Tax Authority sets the conditions on which a tax period can be changed and the process for applying. We are not going to print those conditions here, because getting them from an article rather than from the authority is how people end up with an application that is refused after the period they wanted to change has already closed. Confirm the position with the FTA, and confirm the corporate side with your licensing authority, because your constitutional documents also need amending.

Real Talk: In our experience the right answer for most small UAE companies is to leave the year alone and plan around it. The change is worth considering where there is a genuine commercial reason, a group alignment requirement, or a parent company reporting cycle you have to match. It is rarely worth doing to chase a relief window, and an arrangement whose main purpose is a tax advantage has a general anti-abuse rule waiting for it in Article 50 of the Corporate Tax Law [6].

If your reason for wanting a different year is that you are about to restructure anyway, that is a different conversation, and one worth having before the restructuring rather than after. Our free zone company setup and mainland company setup pages set out what each route commits you to, including the constitutional documents that will carry your financial year clause for the life of the company.

What if your accounts and your documents disagree?

Short answer: fix it before the first return, because the return has to be consistent with something and right now it is consistent with nothing.

This is more common than it should be and it usually looks the same. The memorandum of association says the financial year runs 1 January to 31 December. The bookkeeper set the accounting software up in April, when they were engaged, and the software has been closing periods on 31 March ever since. Nobody compared the two documents because they live in different places and belong to different people.

The consequences stack quietly:

Common Mistake: Assuming the accountant checked. In most small UAE companies the accountant was engaged after incorporation, received a licence copy and a bank statement, and was never sent the memorandum of association at all. They set a year end from the information they had. That is not negligence, it is the predictable result of nobody owning the question.

Fixing it is a two step job. Establish what the constitutional documents actually say. Then decide, with advice, whether the accounts move to match the documents or the documents are formally amended to match reality. Those are different projects with different costs, and only one of them is a bookkeeping exercise.

Our post-setup services team handles this reconciliation as part of taking over an existing company's compliance, because it is the first thing that has to be true before anything else can be.

What does a wrong first period actually cost?

Short answer: it never costs one thing, because every downstream date and test inherits the error.

Want your first tax period, registration position and relief window confirmed in one sitting? Get a free consultation→

Does your VAT position follow the same period?

Short answer: no, and treating VAT as an annual cycle attached to your tax period is a separate error worth heading off.

VAT registration is not keyed to your tax period at all. Mandatory registration applies once taxable supplies and imports exceed AED 375,000, and voluntary registration is available above AED 187,500 of taxable supplies, imports or taxable expenses, at a rate of 5% [7]. That is a rolling commercial test on your supplies, not something that waits for your financial year to close.

How do you settle all of this in one sitting?

Short answer: six checks, most of which take minutes, and one of which needs a written answer from the FTA or an adviser.

1. Pull the constitutional documents. Memorandum of association or articles. Find the financial year clause. Write down the year end date and the page it appears on.

2. Confirm the date of establishment. From the incorporation certificate or the licence, not from memory and not from when you started trading.

3. Draw the first period. Establishment date to the first financial year end after it. Note the length in months.

4. Get the treatment confirmed if the first period is unusual. Very short stub, or a gap that suggests an extended first period. This is the check that needs an answer from the Federal Tax Authority or an adviser in writing, not an assumption.

5. Calculate the filing date. Period end plus nine months, for the return and the payment together [1][2].

6. Test the relief window. Is your revenue under AED 3,000,000 for this period and all previous ones [3]. Which of your periods end on or before 31 December 2029 [3]. Is this a loss making period, and if so have you modelled the Article 4(1) consequence of electing [4].

That page is the deliverable. Every subsequent argument about deadlines, about which period a transaction falls into, and about whether to elect, gets settled by looking at it.

For companies in the northern emirates the same exercise applies without variation, because the tax period question is federal even where the licence is not. Our business setup in Sharjah and business setup in Ajman pages cover the licensing side, and the tax period runs off the constitutional documents in exactly the same way. The same is true of an offshore company formation, where founders are most likely to assume that no licence activity in the UAE means no dates to track.

Real Client Stories

Real examples from businesses we have helped set up. Names have been changed for privacy.

Marwan, the founder who counted from the wrong month

Marwan incorporated a Dubai consultancy in March and told everyone, including his bookkeeper, that his financial year ran March to March. His memorandum of association said 31 December. His actual first tax period ran from March to 31 December of the same year, roughly nine and a half months, with a filing deadline of 30 September the following year [1][2].

He had been planning to close his accounts in April and file by the following December. That is a three month gap in the wrong direction. He found out in a review meeting, not from a notice, which is the only reason it cost him nothing.

His comment: "I had said March to March so many times that it had become a fact. Nobody had ever asked me to show them where it was written."

Aisha, the founder whose first period was six weeks long

Aisha set up an e-commerce company in the third week of November with a 31 December financial year end. Her first tax period was about six weeks. She had assumed her first return would cover her first real trading year, which ran through the following December, and had put nothing in her calendar for the stub.

The stub period was small in revenue and entirely real as an obligation. Once identified, it was a straightforward filing. Had it gone unnoticed for two more years, it would have been an unfiled return sitting underneath every period that followed.

Her comment: "Six weeks of trading felt like nothing. It turned out to be a tax period with its own deadline, and I would never have gone looking for it."

Tarek, the founder who elected relief on a loss

Tarek's first tax period showed a loss of about AED 380,000, almost all of it setup, premises and hiring ahead of revenue. Revenue was well under AED 3,000,000, so Small Business Relief was available and his accountant's default was to elect [3].

Electing meant zero tax on a loss, which is the same as not electing, and it meant that under Article 4(1) of Ministerial Decision No. 73 of 2023 the loss could not be carried forward to any subsequent period at all [4]. He turned profitable in his third period. The loss that would have sheltered part of that profit no longer existed.

His comment: "I was told the relief was free money. It was free in the year I did not owe anything, and it cost me the only asset that year produced."

Get your first tax period settled before it settles three deadlines for you

The whole of this guide reduces to one instruction. Find the financial year clause in your constitutional documents, because it is the input that every Corporate Tax date in your company's life is calculated from.

Get it right and the rest is ordinary planning. Your return and payment are due nine months from your period end [1][2], your registration position is confirmed against the Federal Tax Authority's own timetable rather than assumed, your revenue is tested over the correct window against the AED 3,000,000 threshold [3], and your election decision in a loss making period is made deliberately rather than by default [4].

Get it wrong and you are not making one mistake. You are making a registration mistake, a filing mistake and a relief mistake at the same time, from a single wrong date that nobody thought to check because it looked obvious.

Since 2013, BusinessDubai.ae has set up companies across free zone, mainland and offshore structures and taken them through their first tax cycle. We will read your constitutional documents, tell you what your first tax period actually is, calculate the deadline that follows from it, and flag whether your first period is one where electing the relief is the right call or the expensive one. Our post-setup services team then holds the calendar so the date does not depend on anyone remembering it.

Get a free consultation→

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a tax period for UAE Corporate Tax?

It is the period your Corporate Tax return covers, and it follows the financial year your company uses to prepare its financial statements. For most companies after the first year it is a clean twelve months running to the same date each year.

Is my first tax period the same as my first calendar year?

Only if your constitutional documents set a 31 December financial year end and you were established early in that year. Otherwise it is the period from your date of establishment to whatever year end your documents specify, which can be much shorter or slightly longer than twelve months.

Does my incorporation date set my financial year?

No. It sets the day your first tax period begins. The financial year clause in your memorandum of association or articles sets the day it ends, and every year end after that.

Can my first tax period be less than twelve months?

Yes. A company established a few weeks before its financial year end has a first tax period of a few weeks. It is a real tax period with its own return and its own deadline.

Can my first tax period be more than twelve months?

The gap between establishment and the first year end in your documents can exceed twelve months. Where that is the case, confirm the correct treatment with the Federal Tax Authority or an adviser in writing rather than assuming it, because the answer changes your revenue test and your deadline.

When is my Corporate Tax return due?

Within nine months from the end of your tax period, and the payment is due on the same date [1][2]. There is no separate later date to pay.

Is Corporate Tax registration due at the same time as my first return?

No. They are different clocks. Filing keys off your tax period end. Registration keys off the entity and the Federal Tax Authority's registration timetable, which has its own treatment for persons established on or after 1 March 2024. Confirm your window with the FTA.

When do I have to register if my company was set up after 1 March 2024?

The Federal Tax Authority publishes registration timelines by category of person and by date of establishment, including for entities established on or after 1 March 2024. Confirm the window that applies to your specific entity with the FTA rather than inferring it from your financial year.

Do I have to register if I will not owe any tax?

Yes. Registration and filing are required regardless of whether there is any liability, and the reliefs that produce a nil result are claimed on a return you still have to submit [1][3].

Why does my tax period affect Small Business Relief?

Because the AED 3,000,000 revenue test is applied to the current tax period and to all previous tax periods [3]. If the boundaries between your periods are drawn in the wrong place, you are testing the wrong revenue figures against the threshold, and a breach follows you into later periods.

Does a short first period help me stay under AED 3,000,000?

A shorter period contains less revenue, which is arithmetic rather than planning. What matters is that the boundary is drawn correctly on the facts, not conveniently. Redrawing a business to sit under the threshold engages the general anti-abuse rule in Article 50 of the Corporate Tax Law [3][6].

How is revenue measured for the AED 3,000,000 test?

Under IFRS or UAE GAAP [3][5]. It is a revenue figure prepared under an accounting standard, not a total of bank receipts, and gross versus net presentation can change it materially.

Until when is Small Business Relief available?

For tax periods ending on or before 31 December 2029, under Ministerial Decision No. 131 of 2026 which amended Ministerial Decision No. 73 of 2023 [3].

Does my year end change how many years of relief I get?

Yes. A 31 December year end reaches a final eligible period ending 31 December 2029. A 31 March year end reaches a final eligible period ending 31 March 2029, because the next one ends after the cut off. That is one fewer eligible period for the March company [3].

If I make a loss in my first period, can I carry it forward?

If you did not elect Small Business Relief in that period, an unutilised loss may be carried forward into later periods in which you again do not elect, subject to Article 37 of the Corporate Tax Law [4]. If you did elect in the period the loss arose, it cannot be carried forward at all and is permanently lost, under Article 4(1) of Ministerial Decision No. 73 of 2023 [4].

So does Small Business Relief destroy my losses or not?

Both halves are true of different losses. Losses incurred in a period where you elect are permanently lost, Article 4(1). Unutilised losses from earlier non-electing periods survive and may be carried into later non-electing periods, Article 4(2) [4]. Never take a flat answer in either direction.

Does the same rule apply to interest?

Article 5 of the same decision mirrors it for net interest expenditure. Net interest incurred in an electing period cannot be carried forward, Article 5(1). Unutilised net interest from earlier non-electing periods survives into later non-electing periods, subject to Article 30 of the Corporate Tax Law, Article 5(2) [4].

Should I elect Small Business Relief in a loss making first period?

Model it before you decide. You pay nothing either way in a loss year, and electing forfeits that year's loss permanently [4]. For a business expecting profit within a few years, that forfeited loss can be worth more than the relief in the year you claim it.

Can I change my financial year?

It is possible and it is not a casual change. It amends your constitutional documents, moves your period boundaries, moves your filing deadline, changes which periods fall inside the Small Business Relief window, and affects your accounts and comparatives. The Federal Tax Authority sets the conditions and the process, so confirm them with the FTA before you commit.

What if my accounting software has a different year end from my documents?

Resolve it before your first return. Either the accounts move to match the constitutional documents or the documents are formally amended to match reality. Those are different projects, and only one of them is a bookkeeping change.

Is my VAT registration linked to my tax period?

No. VAT registration is mandatory once taxable supplies and imports exceed AED 375,000, with voluntary registration available above AED 187,500 of taxable supplies, imports or expenses [7]. It is a rolling test on supplies, not an annual event tied to your financial year.

Why does AED 375,000 appear in both Corporate Tax and VAT?

They are unrelated thresholds that happen to share a number. In Corporate Tax it is the amount of taxable income charged at 0% before 9% applies [1]. In VAT it is a turnover threshold for mandatory registration [7].

Does a free zone company have a different tax period?

No. The tax period follows the financial year in the constitutional documents in the same way. What differs for a free zone company is the rate position on qualifying income and the conditions attached to it, not how the period is identified.

What is the single most common first tax period mistake?

Assuming the year runs from the incorporation date. It runs to the financial year end in the constitutional documents, and the incorporation date only tells you when the first period starts.

Related reading: UAE Corporate Tax Filing Requirements, Small Business Relief to 2029, UAE Accounting Standards and IFRS, EmaraTax Portal Guide

References

[1] The Official Portal of the UAE Government. Corporate tax, setting the rate at 0% on taxable income up to AED 375,000 and 9% above that threshold, with the return and payment due within nine months from the end of the tax period, and registration required irrespective of liability. u.ae corporate tax

[2] Federal Tax Authority. Guidance urging submission of Corporate Tax returns and settlement of Corporate Tax liabilities within nine months from the end of the tax period. FTA nine month guidance

[3] UAE Ministry of Finance. Ministerial Decision No. 131 of 2026, issued 29 July 2026, amending Ministerial Decision No. 73 of 2023 on Small Business Relief, extending availability to tax periods ending on or before 31 December 2029, with the AED 3,000,000 revenue threshold applying to the current and all previous tax periods, revenue determined under IFRS or UAE GAAP, the relief requiring an election on the Corporate Tax return, and unavailability to a Qualifying Free Zone Person or to members of multinational groups above the consolidated revenue threshold. MoF financial legislation

[4] UAE Ministry of Finance. Ministerial Decision No. 73 of 2023 on Small Business Relief, Article 4 on tax losses and Article 5 on net interest expenditure. Article 4(1) and Article 5(1) provide that losses and net interest incurred in a tax period in which the relief is elected cannot be carried forward to subsequent tax periods. Article 4(2) and Article 5(2) provide that unutilised losses and net interest from earlier periods in which the relief was not elected may be carried forward into subsequent periods in which the relief is not elected, subject to Article 37 and Article 30 of the Corporate Tax Law. Ministerial Decision No. 73 of 2023 (PDF)

[5] Federal Tax Authority. Small Business Relief topic page, covering the AED 3,000,000 revenue threshold measured for the relevant and all previous tax periods, the election requirement, the determination of revenue under applicable accounting standards, and the continuing registration and filing obligations. FTA Small Business Relief

[6] UAE Ministry of Finance. Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 on the Taxation of Corporations and Businesses, including Article 21 as the enabling provision for Small Business Relief, Article 37 on tax losses, Article 30 on interest deduction limitation, and Article 50 as the general anti-abuse rule. Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 (PDF)

[7] Federal Tax Authority. Registration for VAT, setting mandatory registration above AED 375,000 of taxable supplies and imports, voluntary registration above AED 187,500 of taxable supplies, imports or taxable expenses, and the standard rate at 5%. FTA VAT registration

[8] BusinessDubai.ae. Internal data from UAE company registrations and post-setup compliance engagements since 2013, including first tax period reconstructions, financial year clauses that conflicted with accounting records, and Small Business Relief elections made in loss making first periods. businessdubai.ae