UAE corporate tax deadlines by financial year end

Under Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022, every taxable person must file a corporate tax return and settle any tax payable within nine months of the end of their tax period. That single rule sounds simple, but because UAE businesses don't all share the same financial year end, the actual calendar date it produces is different for every business — and it's easy to miscalculate if you're working from someone else's deadline.

The rule, and what it means for common year ends

Nine months from the end of your tax period, applied to the financial year ends most UAE businesses use:

If your year end doesn't match one of these, the calculation is the same either way: count nine months forward from your actual financial year end, and that's your deadline for both filing the return and paying whatever's due.

Every taxable person files — regardless of profit

All mainland UAE companies must file a return by their deadline, regardless of size or profit level. This surprises a lot of small business owners: even if your taxable profit falls entirely under the AED 375,000 threshold taxed at 0%, the return itself still has to be filed on time. "We didn't owe anything" isn't a reason the FTA accepts for a late return.

What filing actually involves

Everything runs through the EmaraTax portal, and it's three things, not one: submit the corporate tax return, pay any corporate tax due, and retain the underlying records that support what you filed. Missing the return deadline and missing the payment deadline are both penalized, even if you eventually do both a few days apart.

The penalty for missing it

Late filing triggers a penalty of AED 500 per month, under Cabinet Decision No. 75 of 2023. It accrues from the day after the deadline, which makes it one of the more forgiving compliance penalties in absolute terms — but it's also one of the easiest to avoid entirely, since the deadline is fixed and known nine months in advance.

A deadline that works in your favor, if you register late

If your business registered for corporate tax after the deadline and would otherwise face the AED 10,000 late registration penalty, there's a specific way out: the FTA automatically waives that penalty if you file your first tax return within seven months of the end of your first tax period — not nine. For a first tax period ending 31 December 2025, that means filing by 31 July 2026, two months earlier than the standard deadline. It's worth checking whether this applies before assuming the standard nine-month window is what you're working with.

The nine-month rule is fixed and public. Most late filings aren't caused by not knowing the rule — they're caused by counting from the wrong starting date.