Zero-Rated Exported Services in the UAE: Why Billing a Foreign Client Does Not Automatically Mean 0% VAT

UAE VAT is 5%, and registration becomes mandatory once your taxable supplies and imports exceed AED 375,000 [1]. Most founders of UAE service businesses know those two numbers. The third fact is the one that costs money, and almost nobody is told it before they start invoicing: an invoice addressed to a company abroad is not, by itself, a zero-rated export.

Zero-rating an exported service is a conclusion you reach after applying a test with several limbs, and the billing address is only one input into it. Get the conclusion wrong and the correction does not go back to the client. It comes to you. By the time the Federal Tax Authority reviews a supply the engagement is finished, the invoice is paid, and the foreign client has no contractual reason and often no legal obligation to send you 5% it was never charged. The tax comes out of your own margin.

So this article is shaped differently. We are not going to publish the statutory conditions as a tidy checklist, because they sit in the VAT law and its Executive Regulation and they turn on facts specific to your contract. A checklist copied from a blog is how businesses reach a confident wrong answer. What you get instead is the shape of the test, the traps that catch service businesses repeatedly, the arithmetic of a wrong call, and the questions to put to a tax adviser before you issue a single zero-rated invoice.

Since 2013, BusinessDubai.ae has set up consultancies, agencies, software companies and professional service firms across UAE free zones and the mainland, the exact businesses this question hits hardest. This is a guide, not tax advice.

Is a foreign client enough to make your invoice zero-rated?

Short answer: no, and this single assumption is the most expensive VAT mistake a UAE service business makes.

VAT is a tax on consumption inside the UAE. An export relief exists because the consumption happens somewhere else, so the UAE does not tax it. The test therefore follows consumption, not correspondence. Where the invoice is posted, which currency you were paid in and which bank the wire came from are commercial facts, not tax conclusions.

Every row on the left is true and irrelevant. Every row on the right is where the answer lives.

Real Talk: The reason this mistake is so common is that it is invisible while it is happening. You issue the invoice at 0%, the client pays, the money clears, nothing bounces. There is no rejection, no warning email, no system that stops you. The error sits quietly in your returns accumulating scale for two or three years, and then surfaces all at once during a review, valued at 5% of everything you have billed since you started.

If your company is not yet formed and you are deciding where to place it, understand that the structure choice does not settle this question either. Our free zone company setup page prices a Dubai free zone package at AED 12,800 for the first year with one visa included, and our mainland company setup page prices the Dubai mainland standard route at AED 18,200 for the first year. Both of those companies face exactly the same export-of-services test.

What is the difference between zero-rated and exempt?

Short answer: zero-rated is a taxable supply charged at 0% with input VAT still recoverable, exempt is a different category altogether that kills your input recovery, and treating them as the same thing quietly destroys margin.

Both produce a zero in the VAT column. That is where the similarity ends.

The threshold line matters most. A business whose entire revenue is genuinely zero-rated still crosses AED 375,000 of taxable supplies and still has a mandatory registration obligation [1]. Founders regularly conclude the opposite: "everything I bill is at 0%, so I have no taxable supplies, so I do not need to register." That has the categories backwards. Zero-rated supplies are taxable supplies carrying a rate of zero.

Common Mistake: Calling your invoices "VAT exempt" in emails, contracts and accounting software when you mean zero-rated. If your bookkeeper codes zero-rated exports as exempt, input VAT recovery is switched off inside your own system and you under-recover every quarter with no error message. Our guide to UAE VAT return filing covers how each category is reported, and our VAT registration and compliance guide covers the registration mechanics.

Why is zero-rated better for your business than exempt?

Short answer: because zero-rating gives you the best of both positions, a client who pays no VAT and a business that still reclaims the VAT on its own costs.

"Input VAT recoverable" sounds like accounting vocabulary until you attach numbers to it. Take a UAE consultancy with AED 2,000,000 of annual revenue, all billed abroad, and AED 600,000 of annual UAE costs carrying 5% VAT: office and licence charges, software, professional fees, local subcontractors, marketing.

Quick Math: The VAT sitting inside those costs is 5% of AED 600,000, which is AED 30,000 a year. If the revenue is correctly zero-rated, that AED 30,000 is recoverable input VAT, so the true cost of the cost base is AED 600,000. If the same revenue were exempt, the AED 30,000 is not recoverable and simply stays a cost, so the cost base is AED 630,000. Over five years that is AED 150,000 of pure margin, on a business that never charged a client a fils of VAT either way.

So zero-rating is not a technicality you tolerate. When it genuinely applies, it is the most favourable VAT position a UAE service business can be in. Which is precisely why it is worth confirming properly rather than assuming, because the temptation to reach for it is strong and the downside of reaching for it wrongly is a reassessment.

Not sure which category your revenue actually falls into? Talk to a setup expert→

What does the export test actually look at?

Short answer: it looks at where the recipient belongs, whether that recipient has a UAE presence connected to your supply, where the benefit of the service is received, and what you can prove.

Here is the honest part. The conditions for zero-rating an exported service sit in the UAE VAT law and its Executive Regulation [2], published alongside the rest of the federal tax legislation by the Ministry of Finance [4], drafted with qualifications, exceptions and defined terms that do not survive being summarised into five bullet points on a blog. Any article handing you a confident numbered checklist has either simplified it to the point of being wrong for your facts, or is reciting an older position. What we can usefully give you is the shape of the test, so you know what your adviser will examine and what facts to have straight first.

Limb one: who is the recipient, and where do they belong? Not who paid the invoice and not who introduced the work. The recipient is the person to whom the service is contractually supplied, and "belongs" is a defined concept concerned with establishments and residence, not postal addresses.

Limb two: does the recipient have a UAE presence relevant to this supply? A foreign company with a UAE branch, subsidiary, representative office or UAE-based staff is not simply "a foreign client". Whether that presence is relevant depends on its connection to the specific service you supplied. This limb catches the most businesses, and it gets its own section below.

Limb three: where is the service performed and where is its benefit received? A service used and enjoyed abroad points one way. A service whose real beneficiaries sit in the UAE points the other, regardless of who signed the contract.

Limb four: does the service relate to something physically in the UAE? Services connected to UAE real property, to goods located in the UAE, or performed in the presence of people in the UAE are treated differently from purely remote advice. If your work touches a building, a warehouse, a shipment or a room of attendees inside the country, do not assume the export analysis survives.

Limb five: can you evidence all of the above? A supply that meets every condition and cannot be evidenced is, in practice, one you may not be able to defend.

Pro Tip: Ask for the position in writing, addressed to your specific contract and client, before the first invoice goes out. It is not a guarantee against a different view from the FTA, but it is a documented, contemporaneous, reasoned basis for the treatment you adopted, which is a very different conversation from "we assumed." That opinion costs a rounding error against 5% of three years of export revenue.

How do you prove your client is outside the UAE?

Short answer: with a file assembled at the time of the engagement, not reconstructed under review two years later.

We are not going to publish a list of evidence and claim the FTA accepts it, because the authority applies its expectations to facts and we will not put words in its mouth. What we can tell you, from files we have watched go through review, is what separates a position that holds together from one that falls apart. The practical standard is this: if a stranger opened your file in three years, with no memory of the engagement and no access to you, would the documents alone lead them to the same conclusion you reached?

That last row is the one businesses skip and later wish they had not. Asking a client to confirm in writing whether it has a UAE establishment, and to tell you if that changes, costs one paragraph in an onboarding form. It is also the single most useful document in the file if the position is ever questioned, because it dates your enquiry to the start of the relationship.

Real Talk: Evidence is a time-sensitive asset. The client contact who could have confirmed the group structure leaves. The folder gets archived. The freelancer who delivered the work is gone. Everything easy to obtain during the engagement becomes hard eighteen months after it ends. Build the file while the relationship is warm. Our post-setup services team handles VAT registration and filing for service companies, which is where this discipline becomes routine rather than something remembered at year end.

What happens when your foreign client has a UAE branch or UAE staff?

Short answer: this is the specific trap, and it converts what looks like a textbook export into a supply that may be consumed squarely inside the UAE.

Picture the arrangement that catches people. A group headquartered in London, Singapore or New York also has a Dubai office, a JAFZA warehouse, a DIFC entity or four staff working from the UAE. You are engaged by the foreign parent, the contract names the foreign parent, and the parent pays you from a foreign account. Every visible fact says export.

Now ask the questions that matter. Who instructs you day to day? Who attends the calls? Who receives and uses the deliverable? Whose problem does your work solve? If the answers are consistently "the Dubai office," the transaction has a UAE recipient of benefit sitting inside a wrapper that says foreign.

None of these are automatically standard rated. All of them are cases where the answer depends on how the UAE presence connects to your specific supply, which is a legal question about your facts and not one an article can resolve for you. What is not in doubt is that they must be asked. A business that never asks whether its foreign clients have UAE establishments has not formed a position at all. It has formed a habit.

Common Mistake: Deciding the question once, at the start of a relationship, and never revisiting it. Groups open UAE offices. Clients relocate people to Dubai. A relationship that was a clean export in year one can quietly stop being one in year three, without a single change to the contract, the invoice template or your accounting codes. Build a review point into your annual VAT routine.

Groups that operate through several UAE entities create the same puzzle from the inside. Our guide to running two businesses in Dubai sets out how related structures interact, and our VAT group registration guide covers when related UAE entities can be treated as one taxable person.

Do your overseas clients have UAE offices you have never asked about? Check your eligibility→

Does a free zone company count as being outside the UAE for VAT?

Short answer: no, and this is the second most expensive assumption in this subject.

A UAE free zone is inside the UAE. A free zone company is a UAE company, registers for VAT on the same thresholds, files the same returns and is subject to the same rules [1]. No version of the free zone concept places your customer, or you, outside the state for general VAT purposes. Two things get tangled here.

Corporate Tax free zone status concerns a Qualifying Free Zone Person and the 0% rate on qualifying income. It requires substance and activity conditions and audited financial statements, and selling to UAE consumers or into the mainland is generally an excluded activity. It says nothing about VAT.

VAT Designated Zone status is a narrow, goods-focused concept. It exists so physical stock under customs control can move without VAT attaching at every step. It is not a general exit from VAT, and it is emphatically not a rule about services.

So if you supply services to a company in a UAE free zone, you are supplying a UAE customer, and if you are a free zone company supplying services abroad you run exactly the same export test as a mainland company. The zone changes neither side of it. Our Designated Zone VAT guide covers the goods rules and our Qualifying Free Zone Person guide covers the Corporate Tax side. Keeping them in separate lanes is most of the battle.

What does the FTA actually reassess, and who ends up paying?

Short answer: the supply is re-examined against the law, and the cash comes from your own bank account, because the client is gone.

When a supply you treated as zero-rated is determined to have been standard rated, the output tax attaches to the supply. Whether the 5% is calculated on top of what you invoiced or treated as already sitting inside it depends on your contract wording and your adviser's reading of your facts, and it is one of the first questions to ask. Either way the practical position is the same: you are funding tax on a sale you already made and were already paid for, at a price that never contained it.

Recovering it from the client is a commercial question with an unattractive answer. If the engagement ended two years ago there is no relationship to draw on, and if your contract has no VAT recovery clause there may be no contractual right to invoice for it. Across the service companies we have set up since 2013, this money is almost never recovered [5].

Quick Math: A consultancy billing AED 2,400,000 a year entirely to overseas clients at 0%. If that treatment is wrong, the output tax is 5%, which is AED 120,000 for one year. Across three years of the same treatment that is AED 360,000, before considering any penalty exposure under the tax procedures framework, and before the professional fees of dealing with it. Set that against the cost of a written adviser opinion obtained before the first invoice, and the economics of getting a proper answer are not close.

We are deliberately not putting penalty figures in this article. The penalty framework has its own rules and its own timing, and quoting a number from memory is exactly the sort of confident guess this guide is arguing against. Our tax procedures and penalty framework guide covers that regime, and if you have already filed on a treatment you now doubt, our voluntary disclosure guide covers the mechanism for correcting a return before someone else finds it.

Pro Tip: If you are reading this and quietly recognising your own invoicing pattern, do not fix it silently and hope the earlier periods are forgotten. Get the position assessed properly, and if a correction is needed, correct it through the proper route. A business that identifies and discloses its own error is in a materially better conversation than one that is found.

Do you still have to register for VAT if everything you bill is zero-rated?

Short answer: yes, because zero-rated supplies are taxable supplies and they count towards the threshold.

This follows from the category distinction earlier, and it catches export-only businesses constantly. Mandatory registration is triggered once taxable supplies and imports exceed AED 375,000. Voluntary registration is available above AED 187,500 of taxable supplies, imports or taxable expenses [1]. Zero-rated revenue sits inside "taxable supplies" for that purpose.

There is a second reason registration is worth wanting rather than avoiding. A business making zero-rated supplies charges its clients nothing and reclaims the VAT on its own costs. Staying unregistered while you are entitled to recover means paying 5% on your UAE cost base for no reason. For a company spending AED 400,000 a year locally, that is AED 20,000 left on the table annually.

Real Talk: The businesses hurt here are rarely the large ones. They are two-person consultancies and small software teams billing a few hundred thousand dirhams abroad, who read "exports are 0%" and concluded VAT was something that happened to other people. The threshold does not care that your rate is zero. Our free zone company setup page covers the licence side for service exporters, and our post-setup services team handles registration and the ongoing returns so the threshold is not crossed unnoticed.

How should you price and paper an engagement you intend to zero-rate?

Short answer: assume you might be wrong, and make the contract carry that risk instead of your margin.

You cannot contract your way into a zero-rated treatment. The law decides that. What you can do is make sure that if the treatment turns out to be wrong, you are not the only party exposed to it.

Put a VAT clause in every export engagement. Fees exclusive of VAT, and if UAE VAT is subsequently determined to apply, the client pays it on demand. Standard drafting, and its value only appears in the scenario nobody plans for.

Ask the establishment question at onboarding. A written confirmation of whether the client has any UAE branch, subsidiary, office or UAE-based personnel, with an obligation to notify you if that changes.

Name the contracting entity precisely. "Acme Group" is not an entity. The analysis turns on which legal person you contracted with, so the contract should say so and the invoice should match it.

Record who receives the deliverable, not just who pays. A one-line note about which team consumed the work is trivial now and hard to reconstruct later.

Keep the file with the invoice. Contract, entity documents, establishment confirmation, deliverable, payment reconciliation. If they live in five places, the file effectively does not exist.

What does this look like across different service businesses?

Short answer: the more your work touches UAE property, UAE goods or UAE people, the weaker the export analysis gets.

This table is a thinking aid, not a determination. Every row needs its own facts examined, which is the point of the article.

Notice the pattern. The strongest export positions are services delivered remotely, consumed abroad, by an entity with no UAE presence connected to the work. Every step away from that description weakens it, and two or three steps away it stops being a question you should answer yourself. Our free zone versus mainland versus offshore comparison sets out where the structural boundaries fall, and our offshore company formation page covers the structures that hold assets rather than trade.

What should you ask a tax adviser before you issue a single zero-rated invoice?

Short answer: twelve questions, in writing, about your actual contract rather than about exports in general.

This is the practical output of this entire article. Take these to a qualified UAE tax adviser and ask for the answers in writing.

1. Who is the recipient of this supply, as a matter of law, and where does that recipient belong?
2. Does that recipient have any establishment in the UAE, and if so, is it connected to this supply?
3. Where is the benefit of this service received and used?
4. Does any part of this service relate to real property, goods or people located in the UAE?
5. On our facts, do we meet the conditions for zero-rating in the VAT law and Executive Regulation, and which specific facts are you relying on?
6. What evidence should we hold for each condition, and for how long?
7. If our client opens a UAE office next year, what changes and when?
8. Does any part of this engagement need to be split between zero-rated and standard rated treatment?
9. How should this appear on the invoice and in our accounting system?
10. How is it reported on the VAT return?
11. If the FTA takes a different view, is the 5% calculated on top of our fee or treated as included in it, and what does our contract say about that?
12. What would you want to see in our file if this supply were reviewed in three years?

Question five separates advice from reassurance. An adviser who answers it by naming the facts relied on has given you something you can act on. An adviser who answers "yes, exports are zero-rated" has given you what a search engine gives away.

Pro Tip: Ask the same twelve questions again whenever you sign a materially different type of engagement, not only a new client. A clean position on remote advisory work is not automatically a clean position on the training day you just agreed to deliver in Dubai for that same client.

Want the registration, the filing and the position reviewed together rather than piecemeal? Get a free consultation→

What is the real cost of getting this wrong at different revenue levels?

Short answer: it scales linearly with everything you have ever billed on the wrong treatment, which is why finding it early matters more than being right first time.

The exposure is not a fixed penalty. It is a percentage of your history.

Those figures are arithmetic on the 5% rate [1], not a prediction of any assessment, and they exclude penalties and professional costs. They make one point: at every level in that table, the cost of a written adviser position before the first invoice is a small fraction of the second column. The error does not get worse over time. It just gets older, and older is more expensive.

Keep Corporate Tax out of this reasoning entirely. It is 0% up to AED 375,000 of taxable income and 9% above, due within nine months of the tax period end [3], and it is a separate registration, return and analysis. Our UAE corporate tax filing guide covers that side.

Real Client Stories

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

Nadia, the consultancy that zero-rated everything by default

Nadia ran a five-person management consultancy from a Dubai free zone, billing roughly AED 2,300,000 a year, almost all of it to clients in Europe and North America. Her accounting software had one export invoice template with the VAT line removed, and it had been used for every foreign client since the company was formed. Nobody had ever asked which entity was being invoiced or who was using the work.

When we reviewed the client list before a VAT registration health check, three of her eleven clients had UAE operations, and one instructed her almost entirely through its Dubai office. The remaining eight looked like clean exports. The point was not that everything was wrong. It was that nobody could tell which parts were right, because no file had ever been built to answer the question. She took the three doubtful relationships to a tax adviser and rebuilt her onboarding form around the establishment question.

Her comment: "I had not made a decision. I had made an assumption in year one and copied it four hundred times."

Faisal, the software company that lost the argument to its own client

Faisal built and supported a logistics platform for an overseas group, billing about AED 1,700,000 a year at 0%. The group also had a UAE branch, and over time that branch became the heaviest user of the platform and the source of nearly all support requests. The contract still named the foreign parent and payments still came from abroad, so nothing in his own records suggested anything had changed.

When the treatment was questioned he asked the client to fund the VAT. The group's tax team declined, pointing out that his contract contained no VAT recovery clause and the fee had been agreed as a final amount. The technical question was arguable. The commercial one was not, and the cash came from his own reserves.

His comment: "Everyone told me to worry about whether the treatment was right. Nobody told me to worry about who pays if it is not."

Priya, the agency that was exempt in its own accounting system

Priya's marketing agency billed a mix of UAE and overseas clients, and her bookkeeper had coded every foreign invoice as exempt rather than zero-rated, because both showed no VAT and nobody had explained the difference. The consequence was invisible for two years: the system apportioned her input VAT as though a large part of her revenue carried no recovery entitlement, so she under-recovered every quarter. Her local costs ran to roughly AED 700,000 a year, so the input VAT involved was around AED 35,000 annually. The export treatment was fine. The label was not.

Her comment: "Two identical-looking zeros on an invoice, and one of them was quietly costing me thirty-five thousand a year."

Get your export VAT position confirmed before the invoices exist

The sequence that protects you is short and almost nobody follows it. Identify the legal entity you are contracting with. Ask, in writing, whether it has any UAE presence connected to your work. Establish who receives and uses the deliverable. Take those facts to a UAE tax adviser and get a written position. Then build the file at the same time as the invoice.

Do that, and zero-rating is the best VAT position a UAE service business can occupy: nothing charged to your client, and the VAT on your own costs recovered. Skip it, and you have a treatment that works flawlessly right up until the moment it does not, valued at 5% of everything you have billed since the beginning [1]. We would rather send you for a written opinion than hand you a checklist that fits somebody else's contract.

Since 2013, BusinessDubai.ae has set up the consultancies, agencies and software companies that live on export revenue. Our post-setup services team handles VAT registration and the returns alongside a tax adviser on the treatment itself. If you are still choosing a base, our free zone company setup page prices the Dubai free zone route at AED 12,800 for the first year with one visa included, and our business setup in Sharjah page covers licences from around AED 5,750.

Get a free consultation→

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a service automatically zero-rated because the client is outside the UAE?

No. A foreign client is one fact among several. The test in the VAT law and its Executive Regulation looks at where the recipient belongs, whether it has a UAE establishment connected to the supply, and where the benefit is received. Get a written position from a tax adviser on your specific contract.

What is the difference between zero-rated and exempt in the UAE?

Zero-rated is a taxable supply charged at 0%, reported on your return, counted towards the registration threshold, and it leaves your input VAT recoverable. Exempt is a different category that does not carry input VAT recovery. Both show no VAT on the invoice, which is why they get confused.

Do zero-rated supplies count towards the AED 375,000 VAT registration threshold?

Yes. They are taxable supplies carrying a rate of zero, so they count. A business whose entire revenue is zero-rated can still be required to register once it exceeds AED 375,000 [1].

Can I register for VAT voluntarily if I only bill overseas clients?

Voluntary registration is available above AED 187,500 of taxable supplies, imports or taxable expenses [1]. For an export business with meaningful UAE costs, registration is usually what lets you recover input VAT rather than absorb it.

What evidence do I need to prove my client is outside the UAE?

We will not publish a list and claim the FTA accepts it. The practical standard is a file that would lead an independent reviewer to the same conclusion in three years: a signed contract naming the entity, entity documents, correspondence, a written confirmation about UAE establishments, and payment reconciled to the contracting party.

My client is a foreign company with a Dubai branch. Is my invoice still an export?

Not necessarily, and this is the most common trap. It depends on whether that UAE establishment is connected to your particular supply and who actually receives the benefit. This is exactly the fact pattern to take to an adviser rather than resolve yourself.

The contract is with the overseas head office but the Dubai team instructs me. Does that matter?

It is highly relevant. Who instructs you, who attends the calls and who uses the deliverable all speak to where the service is consumed, which is what the export relief is concerned with.

Is a UAE free zone company treated as outside the UAE for VAT?

No. A free zone company is a UAE company for VAT purposes, registers on the same thresholds and files the same returns [1]. Free zone status is not a VAT exit.

Is a Designated Zone the same as being outside the UAE?

No. A Designated Zone is a narrow goods and customs concept, not a general escape from VAT and not a rule about services. See our Designated Zone VAT guide for how it works.

Does Qualifying Free Zone Person status affect my VAT?

No. That is a Corporate Tax concept concerning qualifying income and the 0% rate, with its own substance, activity and audit conditions. It answers nothing about VAT, and the two need to be kept in separate lanes.

What happens if the FTA decides my zero-rated invoices were standard rated?

The output tax attaches to the supply, and in practice you fund it. Whether the 5% sits on top of what you invoiced or is treated as included depends on your facts and contract wording, which is one of the first things to ask an adviser.

Can I recover the VAT from my client afterwards?

Commercially, rarely. If the engagement ended long ago and your contract has no VAT recovery clause, you may have neither a relationship nor a contractual right. This is why the clause matters at signing rather than at assessment.

I run marketing campaigns for a foreign brand targeting UAE customers. Is that an export?

That fact pattern is under pressure, because the campaign is consumed in the UAE market even though the payer is abroad. Do not assume the foreign invoice settles it.

I train a foreign client's staff at their Dubai office. Is that zero-rated?

Services performed in the presence of people located in the UAE sit in a different category from remote advisory work. Take that specific engagement to an adviser rather than applying your usual export treatment to it.

My work relates to a building in Dubai but my client is overseas. What then?

Services relating to UAE real property are treated distinctly. The overseas instruction does not move the building. This is one of the clearest cases for getting advice before invoicing.

My client had no UAE presence when we started but opened an office last year. Does anything change?

Potentially yes, without a single change to your contract or invoice template. Build an annual review point into your VAT routine and ask clients to notify you of UAE establishments.

What if I have already been zero-rating incorrectly for two years?

Do not quietly change treatment going forward and hope the history is forgotten. Get the position assessed and, if a correction is needed, use the proper correction route. Our voluntary disclosure guide covers the mechanism.

Does Corporate Tax work the same way as VAT for exports?

No, and they should never be reasoned about together. Corporate Tax is 0% up to AED 375,000 of taxable income and 9% above, with the return due within nine months of the tax period end [3]. It is a separate registration, a separate return and a separate analysis.

Why will this guide not just list the conditions for me?

Because the conditions sit in the VAT law and its Executive Regulation, they are drafted with qualifications and defined terms, and they apply to facts. A checklist copied from an article is how businesses reach a confident wrong answer, and the reassessment does not care where the checklist came from.

What is the single most expensive mistake in this area?

Assuming that a foreign billing address means 0%, and issuing hundreds of invoices on that assumption without ever asking whether the client has a UAE establishment or who actually uses the work.

Related reading: UAE VAT Return Filing, Designated Zone VAT in the UAE, VAT Registration and Compliance, Qualifying Free Zone Person

References

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

[2] Federal Tax Authority. VAT legislation, guides and public clarifications, which is where the conditions for zero-rating exported services and the evidence expectations sit, and the authority to consult before adopting a treatment. Federal Tax Authority

[3] The Official Portal of the UAE Government. Corporate tax at 0% on taxable income up to AED 375,000 and 9% above, with the return and payment due within nine months of the end of the tax period, a regime separate from VAT. u.ae corporate tax

[4] UAE Ministry of Finance. Financial legislation listing, covering the federal tax legislation and implementing decisions applicable to UAE businesses. MoF financial legislation

[5] BusinessDubai.ae. Internal analysis from UAE company formations since 2013 across free zone and mainland service businesses, including VAT registration health checks on export-led consultancies, agencies and software companies, and the recurring treatment and evidence failures described in this guide. businessdubai.ae