Corporate Tax for Freelancers and Sole Establishments in the UAE

Corporate tax arrived in the UAE without changing the day-to-day life of most freelancers — and that is exactly why so many of them misjudge it. The instinct is to treat corporate tax as something that belongs to companies with an LLC, a trade licence and an accounts department, and to assume that a solo consultant, a freelance designer or a sole establishment operating on a freelance permit sits somewhere outside the system. That instinct is only half right.

A freelancer or sole establishment is a natural person in the eyes of the tax law, and a natural person can absolutely be a taxable person — but only once their business activity crosses a specific, published turnover line. Below that line, nothing changes. Above it, real registration and filing duties apply. This guide sets out where the line sits, what income counts towards it, what stays firmly out of scope, and how corporate tax services fit around a self-employed practice without turning a simple situation into a complicated one.

If your turnover has already crossed that line, our detailed guide to corporate tax for sole proprietors in the UAE walks through registration, allowable deductions and the worked tax sums step by step.

The one number that decides everything

For a natural person conducting business in the UAE — and that includes freelancers, independent professionals and sole establishments — corporate tax turns on a single threshold. You are subject to corporate tax on your business activity only if your total business turnover exceeds AED 1,000,000 in a Gregorian calendar year.

That is the whole test at the entry point. Not your profit, not your bank balance, not the value of your contracts — your total business turnover across the year. Stay at or below AED 1 million and the corporate tax registration and filing obligations for that activity simply do not attach to you. Cross it, and you become a taxable person on the profit from that business, with the registration and return duties that come with the label.

The reason this catches people out is that “turnover” and “income” feel like the same thing when you are a one-person operation. They are not. Turnover is the gross figure you invoice and collect for your work before any expenses come off. A freelancer who bills AED 1.1m and spends AED 500,000 running the practice has crossed the threshold on the AED 1.1m, even though the money that actually stays with them is closer to AED 600,000.

AED 1,000,000

Total business turnover in a Gregorian calendar year above which a natural person — freelancer or sole establishment — becomes subject to UAE corporate tax on business activity

What actually counts as business turnover

The threshold looks only at turnover from business or professional activity you carry on as a natural person. In practice, for a freelancer or sole establishment, that means the fees and revenue from the work itself: consulting fees, design retainers, development contracts, commissions, trading income under a sole establishment, and similar earnings from an activity you run for your own account.

What matters is the character of the income. If you are earning it because you are running a business or professional practice — invoicing clients, delivering services, carrying the commercial risk yourself — it is business turnover and it counts towards the AED 1m line. A freelance permit does not create the liability and does not remove it; it is the activity and its turnover that the tax law looks at, not the piece of paper the activity is licensed under.

That holds whichever route you took to legitimise the work — a freelance licence from a Dubai free zone, a UAE freelance license issued elsewhere in the country, a DED sole establishment, or a freelance visa sponsored through a free zone permit. The licensing authority decides whether you may trade; the Federal Tax Authority decides, separately, whether the money you make from trading is taxable.

This is why a freelancer with several income streams has to be careful. Three separate consulting clients, a training-course side income and some project commissions are all one aggregate business turnover figure for the year. You add them together and test the total against AED 1 million — you do not get a fresh threshold for each client or each type of work.

What stays firmly out of scope

Just as important is what does not count — because this is where the panic usually is misplaced. Several common income types are entirely outside the scope of corporate tax for a natural person, and none of them count towards the AED 1m threshold.

Employment salary. Wages and employment income are not a business activity. If you have a salaried job, that salary is outside corporate tax completely, and it does not push you towards the threshold. An employed person who freelances on the side tests only the freelance turnover, never the combined figure with their salary.

Personal investment income. Income you earn from personal investments held in your own name, in a personal capacity rather than as a business, sits outside the scope. It is not business turnover and it does not count.

Personal real-estate income. Income from real estate you own and let personally, in your own name rather than through a business activity, is likewise out of scope for a natural person.

The through-line is simple: corporate tax for an individual reaches only business activity. Your job, your personal portfolio and your personally-held property are your private financial life, not a taxable business, and the AED 1m test ignores them.

The rule in the statute: Cabinet Decision 49 of 2023, clause by clause

Everything above comes from one short instrument. Cabinet Decision No. 49 of 2023, issued 8 May 2023 and in force from 1 June 2023, is the decision that tells you which business activities of a natural person fall inside UAE corporate tax at all. It runs to four articles, and reading it directly settles most of the arguments freelancers have with themselves.

The definitions in Article 1 do a lot of the work. “Turnover” is defined as the gross amount of income derived during a Gregorian calendar year — gross, which is why the profit-versus-turnover confusion is a confusion and not a genuine ambiguity. “Wage” is defined broadly enough to capture allowances and bonuses, so an employed consultant cannot accidentally drag part of their package into the business count. And both “Personal Investment” and “Real Estate Investment” are defined by reference to whether the activity is, or needs to be, conducted under a licence from a licensing authority in the UAE.

Cabinet Decision No. 49 of 2023 (in force 1 June 2023)	What the text says	What it means for a freelancer
Article 1 — “Turnover"	"The gross amount of income derived during a Gregorian calendar year”	The test is on gross fees, before any expenses come off
Article 1 — “Wage”	The wage given to an employee under an employment contract, in cash or in kind, “and includes all allowances, and bonuses”	Salary, allowances and contractual bonuses never enter the AED 1m count
Article 1 — “Personal Investment”	Investment for the person’s own account, not conducted through a licence, not requiring a licence, and not a commercial business under Federal Decree-Law No. 50 of 2022	Own-account investing sits outside the business figure
Article 1 — “Real Estate Investment”	Sale, leasing, sub-leasing and renting of land or property in the UAE that is not conducted through, and does not require, a licence	Personally-held UAE property income sits outside
Article 2(1)	Business activity of a natural person is subject to corporate tax “only where the total Turnover… exceeds AED 1,000,000… within a Gregorian calendar year”	The single entry test for the whole regime
Article 2(2)	Wage, personal investment income and real estate investment income are excluded “regardless of the amount of Turnover derived from such activities”	The exclusion has no ceiling — a large salary changes nothing
Article 2(3)	A natural person not conducting business subject to corporate tax under this Article “shall not be required to register for Corporate Tax”	Below the line there is no registration duty at all
Article 4	Published in the Official Gazette; in force 1 June 2023	The rule has applied since the first UAE corporate tax periods

One consequence of Article 2(3) deserves emphasis, because it is the clause that saves under-threshold freelancers a great deal of unnecessary work. It does not merely say tax is not due — it says registration is not required. A freelancer turning over AED 600,000 has no EmaraTax account to open, no return to file and no deregistration to worry about later. The obligation begins at the threshold, not before it.

Registration deadlines, and the penalties for missing them

Once you are over the line, the deadline is fixed by a separate instrument. Federal Tax Authority Decision No. 3 of 2024, issued 22 February 2024 and effective 1 March 2024, sets registration timelines for every category of taxable person. Article 5 is the one that governs freelancers and sole establishments.

FTA Decision No. 3 of 2024, Article 5 (effective 1 March 2024)	Deadline to submit the tax registration application
Resident natural person conducting a business during the 2024 Gregorian calendar year or later, whose total turnover in a Gregorian calendar year exceeds the threshold	31 March of the subsequent Gregorian calendar year
Non-resident natural person in the same position	Three months from the date of meeting the requirements of being subject to tax

Applied to the calendar years a UAE freelancer is actually living in, the sequence is mechanical. Turnover above AED 1,000,000 in the 2025 Gregorian year meant a registration application by 31 March 2026 and a return by 30 September 2026. Turnover above AED 1,000,000 in the 2026 Gregorian year means a registration application by 31 March 2027 and a return by 30 September 2027. The registration deadline always lands three months into the following year; the return deadline always lands nine months in.

Article 6 of the same decision sends late registrants to the penalty schedule. That schedule sits in Cabinet Decision No. 75 of 2023, in force from 1 August 2023, whose annexed table was amended by Cabinet Decision No. 10 of 2024 from 1 March 2024. These are statutory penalties, published by the Ministry of Finance, and they apply to a self-employed taxable person exactly as they apply to a company.

Violation (Cabinet Decision No. 75 of 2023, table as amended from 1 March 2024)	Administrative penalty in AED
Failure to submit a tax registration application within the specified timeframe (item 14, as amended by Cabinet Decision No. 10 of 2024)	10,000
Failure to keep the required records and information (item 1)	10,000 per violation; 20,000 for a repeated violation within 24 months of the last one
Failure of the registrant to submit a tax return within the timeframe (item 7)	500 per month or part month for the first twelve months; 1,000 per month or part month from the thirteenth month
Failure of the taxable person to settle payable tax (item 8)	A monthly penalty of 14% per annum, for each month or part month, on the unsettled payable tax
The registrant submits an incorrect tax return (item 9)	500, unless corrected before the return deadline expires
Voluntary disclosure of errors in a return, assessment or refund application (item 10)	A monthly penalty of 1% on the tax difference
Failure to submit a voluntary disclosure before being notified of a tax audit (item 11)	A fixed penalty of 15% on the tax difference, plus 1% per month or part month
Failure to submit a deregistration application within the timeframe (item 3)	1,000 on late submission and monthly thereafter, capped at 10,000
Failure to submit tax data, records and documents in Arabic when requested (item 2)	5,000

Crossing the line: registration and the return

Once your business turnover as a natural person exceeds AED 1,000,000 in the Gregorian year, the picture changes. You are now a taxable person, and two duties follow: you must register for corporate tax with the FTA, and you must file a corporate tax return for the relevant period reporting the profit from your business activity.

Registration is the step people most often miss, precisely because they spent years correctly assuming corporate tax did not apply to them. The mental model has to update the moment the turnover picture changes. If a good year takes you from AED 800,000 to AED 1.2m, you have moved from outside the system to inside it, and the obligation to register and file arrives with that move — not a year later, not when someone reminds you.

The taxable base, once you are in, is the profit from the business — turnover less the deductible expenses of running it. This is where clean bookkeeping stops being optional. A freelancer who tracked only what landed in the bank now needs a proper record of gross fees and allowable costs to compute business profit correctly. The better those records are before you cross the line, the less painful the first return is after you cross it.

Small Business Relief: register, but often pay nothing

Here is the part that takes the sting out of crossing the threshold for most self-employed people. An eligible resident taxable person can elect for Small Business Relief, which treats them as having no taxable income for the tax period, provided revenue stays at or below AED 3,000,000.

For a freelancer or sole establishment, this is the crucial middle band. Between AED 1m and AED 3m of revenue, you are a taxable person — so you register and you file — but the relief, once elected, can reduce your taxable income to nil. You carry the compliance without carrying the tax charge.

Three points matter about the relief. First, it is an election: you claim it in your return rather than receiving it automatically, so you still have to be registered and filing to use it. Second, it is capped by revenue — the moment your revenue climbs above AED 3,000,000, the relief falls away and the ordinary corporate tax rules apply to your business profit in full. That is a real cliff to plan for as a practice grows.

Third, the relief is time-limited: it applies only to tax periods ending on or before 31 December 2029, after Ministerial Decision No. 131 of 2026 extended the original 31 December 2026 window. For a natural person taxed on the Gregorian calendar year, that makes the 2029 period the last one in which the relief can currently be elected — from the 2030 period onward the ordinary corporate tax rules would apply regardless of revenue unless the window is extended again, so anyone relying on the relief should still treat it as an election to make each period rather than a permanent feature.

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The AED 1m threshold is a registration event, not necessarily a tax bill. Most freelancers who cross it and sit under AED 3m of revenue register, file, elect Small Business Relief, and owe nothing. The compliance is genuine; the tax is often nil. The mistake is skipping the registration because you assume there is no tax to pay.

What happens at each turnover level

It helps to see the whole ladder at once, because a freelance practice usually climbs it one rung at a time and the obligations change at each step. The bands below are set by four separate instruments, and none of them moves in step with the others.

Turnover / revenue in the Gregorian year	Register for corporate tax?	File a return?	What applies
At or below AED 1,000,000	No — Cabinet Decision No. 49 of 2023, Article 2(3)	No	Outside the scope of corporate tax for that business activity
Above AED 1,000,000, revenue at or below AED 3,000,000	Yes, by 31 March of the following year	Yes, within nine months of the year end	Small Business Relief may be elected under Ministerial Decision No. 73 of 2023 (as amended by Ministerial Decision No. 131 of 2026) for tax periods ending on or before 31 December 2029
Above AED 3,000,000	Yes	Yes	0% on taxable income up to AED 375,000 and 9% above, per Article 3 of Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 and Cabinet Decision No. 116 of 2022
Above AED 50,000,000	Yes	Yes	Audited financial statements required under Ministerial Decision No. 84 of 2025, Article 2(1)(a), for tax periods commencing on or after 1 January 2025

Three details in Ministerial Decision No. 73 of 2023 are easy to miss and expensive to miss. Article 2(3) bars the relief outright if revenue “in any relevant or previous Tax Period has exceeded the threshold” — so a single AED 3.2m year closes the door on the relief for later years too, even if revenue falls back. Article 4(1) says tax losses arising in a period where the relief is elected cannot be carried forward. And Article 6 treats artificial separation of a business across several persons to stay under AED 3m as an arrangement to obtain a corporate tax advantage under Article 50 of the corporate tax law.

The rate arithmetic above the relief ceiling is straightforward once you have the taxable income figure. The FTA’s own guide on the taxation of natural persons, published 25 November 2023, works an example: taxable income of AED 1,800,000 produces AED 0 on the first AED 375,000 and AED 128,250 on the remaining AED 1,425,000, for a total corporate tax charge of AED 128,250. The AED 375,000 band is allowed once per natural person per tax period across every business activity they conduct, not once per activity — Cabinet Decision No. 116 of 2022, Article 2(1), says so expressly, and Article 2(2) treats artificially splitting a business to claim the band twice as an arrangement to obtain a tax advantage.

Worked turnover test, 2026 Gregorian calendar year	Salary	Business turnover	Over AED 1m?	Position
Employed designer with a side practice	AED 480,000	AED 620,000 in freelance fees	No	Salary is excluded; only the AED 620,000 is tested; no registration
Consultant with three retainers and a training course	Nil	AED 740,000 + AED 210,000 + AED 160,000 = AED 1,110,000	Yes	All business streams aggregate into one figure; registration due by 31 March 2027
Trader with thin margins	Nil	AED 2,400,000 of gross sales, AED 2,150,000 of costs	Yes	The test is on the AED 2,400,000, not on the AED 250,000 of profit
Landlord who also consults	Nil	AED 900,000 of consulting fees, plus AED 1,300,000 of personally-held rental income	No	Real estate investment income is excluded regardless of amount; only AED 900,000 is tested

The fourth row is the one that surprises people most. Cabinet Decision No. 49 of 2023 Article 2(2) excludes real estate investment income “regardless of the amount of Turnover derived from such activities”, and the definition in Article 1 ties that exclusion to property let in your own name without a licence. Put the same property portfolio inside a licensed business and the analysis changes completely.

Records, financial statements and the accounting basis you may use

Crossing the threshold brings a bookkeeping standard with it, and this is where an informal freelance practice usually has the most ground to make up. The relevant rules sit in Ministerial Decision No. 114 of 2023, issued 9 May 2023, and in Ministerial Decision No. 84 of 2025 for the audit question.

Requirement	Threshold	Source
Apply International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)	Default for every taxable person	Ministerial Decision No. 114 of 2023, Article 4(1)
IFRS for SMEs permitted instead	Revenue at or below AED 50,000,000	Ministerial Decision No. 114 of 2023, Article 4(2)
Cash basis of accounting permitted	Revenue at or below AED 3,000,000, or in exceptional circumstances on application to the FTA	Ministerial Decision No. 114 of 2023, Article 2
Audited financial statements required	Revenue above AED 50,000,000 in the tax period, for tax periods commencing on or after 1 January 2025	Ministerial Decision No. 84 of 2025, Article 2(1)(a)
Records kept and produced on request	All taxable persons; failure carries AED 10,000, rising to AED 20,000 for a repeat within 24 months	Cabinet Decision No. 75 of 2023, table item 1

The cash basis is worth understanding rather than assuming. Ministerial Decision No. 114 of 2023 defines it as recognising income and expenditure when cash is received and paid, and it is available where revenue does not exceed AED 3,000,000. That covers most sole establishments in the band between the AED 1m registration threshold and the AED 3m relief ceiling. The FTA’s natural persons guide notes that turnover is otherwise measured on an accrual basis, which matters for a freelancer who invoices heavily in December: on accruals, the work falls into the year it was performed, whatever month the payment lands.

The FTA guide also makes a point that catches people out later. A natural person who registers and then has a quieter year does not fall back out of the system. They retain their registration and file a nil return for the year in which turnover did not exceed AED 1,000,000; deregistration is only available once the business or business activity has actually ceased, and the guide points to a three-month window from cessation. Registration is a one-way door until you stop trading. Our note on corporate tax deregistration on closure in the UAE covers that exit route.

Freelance tax filing in the UAE: what the return asks for

Freelance tax filing in the UAE only becomes a duty once you are a taxable person — that is, once your business turnover has crossed the AED 1,000,000 line and you have registered as a natural person subject to corporate tax. Below the threshold there is no return to file at all. Above it, filing is an annual exercise, not a monthly one like VAT.

For a natural person, the tax period is the Gregorian calendar year, and the corporate tax return is due within nine months of the end of that period. That gives the self-employed tax filing deadline a fixed shape: a calendar year ending 31 December produces a return due by the end of the following September, every year, for everyone in the same position. The return is a self-assessment: you report the gross business turnover, the deductible costs of running the practice, the profit that results and — if you are electing it — Small Business Relief. Keep the bookkeeping straight through the year and the return itself is mostly a matter of transcribing figures you already hold.

Two things trip freelancers up at filing time. The first is treating the return as optional because the relief will zero the tax anyway; the filing duty stands whether or not tax is actually due. The second is leaving the records until the deadline is almost on top of them. Our note on corporate tax return filing in the UAE sets out the nine-month timeline in more detail.

Freelancers with US clients and the 30% withholding question

Freelancers who work with United States clients or platforms are often asked for a W-8 form, or find a slice of a fee held back before it reaches them. This is US tax rather than UAE corporate tax, but it is worth understanding because the sums are real. By default, a US payer must withhold 30% on certain US-source payments to a foreign person, and may apply backup withholding where no valid tax form is on file.

The form that answers this is the W-8BEN for an individual freelancer, or the W-8BEN-E where you invoice through a UAE company. Completing it certifies that you are not a US person. For personal services actually performed outside the United States, the income is generally treated as foreign-source and sits outside US withholding altogether — the form is what tells the payer to stop deducting. There is no broad income tax treaty between the US and the UAE, so relief usually flows from the foreign-source character of the work, not from a treaty rate.

None of this changes your UAE position, where the AED 1m turnover test still governs. If cross-border invoicing is a large part of your practice, it is worth taking proper advice on the paperwork so a foreign payer does not withhold where it need not.

The three mistakes we see most

Across self-employed clients, the same handful of errors recur — and all of them come from misreading one part of the rule.

Testing profit instead of turnover. A freelancer looks at what they kept after costs, sees a figure under AED 1m, and concludes they are safe — when their gross turnover was well over the line. The threshold is on turnover. Watch the gross number.

Blending personal and business income. Someone adds their salary, or their personal rental income, to their freelance fees and either panics unnecessarily or, less often, miscalculates the business figure. Salary, personal investment income and personal property income are all out of scope. Keep them separate and test only the business turnover.

Assuming the freelance permit is the trigger. People treat the permit as the thing that does or does not create a tax duty. It does neither. The activity and its turnover decide the position; the permit is a licensing formality that sits alongside the tax question, not inside it.

Opening a business bank account as a freelancer or sole establishment

A clean set of records starts with a clean business bank account, and for a UAE freelancer or sole establishment this is where the tax rules meet daily practice. Running business fees through the same account as your salary and personal spending is the quickest way to blur the AED 1m turnover figure you need to be able to prove.

A dedicated business account in the name of the sole establishment keeps the gross-fee number visible and separate from salary, personal investment income and personal property income — all of which sit outside corporate tax. Banks in the UAE will usually ask for the trade or freelance licence, your Emirates ID, proof of address and a sense of your expected turnover and client base before opening a business account. Newer digital account options aimed at small businesses have made the process lighter than it once was, though requirements still vary from bank to bank.

The practical point is simple: whatever account you use, keep business money and private money apart from day one. When the turnover picture is unambiguous, the AED 1m test is a quick check and any future freelance tax filing is straightforward. Our guide to opening a UAE business bank account covers the documents and the common reasons applications get rejected.

How the pieces fit for a self-employed practice

Put together, the rules for a freelancer or sole establishment form a clean sequence. Track your gross business turnover across the Gregorian year, keeping it visibly separate from any salary, personal investment income or personal real-estate income. Test that business turnover against the AED 1,000,000 line. If you stay at or below it, there is nothing to register and nothing to file for that activity — though keeping the records is still wise, because a strong year can change the answer.

If you cross AED 1m, register with the FTA and prepare to file. Then check your revenue against the AED 3m Small Business Relief ceiling: under it, you can elect the relief and reduce your taxable income to nil while still meeting the registration and filing duties; over it, the ordinary rules apply to your business profit and the planning becomes more involved. For many individuals moving from freelancing towards a more structured operation, this is also the moment to weigh up licensing and structure questions, where business setup advisory can help you think through whether a sole establishment remains the right vehicle or whether a company structure fits the direction of travel.

None of this needs to be complicated, and for most freelancers it genuinely is not. The single discipline that prevents almost every problem is honest, current bookkeeping — a running record of gross fees that makes the AED 1m test a five-minute check rather than a year-end scramble. Get that habit in place early and the corporate tax question largely answers itself, year after year.

A compliance calendar for a self-employed taxable person

Because the tax period for a natural person is the Gregorian calendar year, every deadline in the year is derived from two fixed points: 31 March for registration and nine months from the year end for the return. That gives a self-employed practice a calendar it can actually plan around, unlike a company whose dates float with its licence issuance month.

Point in the cycle	Date for the 2026 Gregorian tax period	Statutory basis
Tax period opens	1 January 2026	Tax period for a natural person is the Gregorian calendar year
Rolling turnover check against AED 1,000,000	Continuous through the year	Cabinet Decision No. 49 of 2023, Article 2(1)
Tax period closes and turnover is finally tested	31 December 2026	Cabinet Decision No. 49 of 2023, Article 2(1)
Registration application due if turnover exceeded the threshold	31 March 2027	FTA Decision No. 3 of 2024, Article 5
Financial statements prepared on the permitted basis	Before the return is filed	Ministerial Decision No. 114 of 2023, Articles 2 and 4
Corporate tax return and any Small Business Relief election filed	30 September 2027	Nine months from the end of the tax period, Article 53 of Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022
Payable tax settled	By the return due date; unpaid amounts accrue 14% per annum monthly	Cabinet Decision No. 75 of 2023, table item 8
Records retained and producible on FTA request	Ongoing	Cabinet Decision No. 75 of 2023, table item 1

Two practical notes on that calendar. First, the Small Business Relief election is made in the return, so the September date is the one that actually secures the relief — being registered is not enough on its own. Second, the relief’s own sunset is written into Ministerial Decision No. 73 of 2023, Article 2(2), as amended by Ministerial Decision No. 131 of 2026, which now applies the AED 3,000,000 threshold to tax periods ending on or before 31 December 2029. For a natural person taxed on the calendar year, the 2029 period is therefore the last one in which the relief as currently drafted can be elected, and the 2030 return would be prepared under the ordinary rules unless the Ministry of Finance extends the window again.

That makes the 2030 filing season a real change of gear for freelancers who have been registering, filing and paying nothing. If your practice sits between AED 1m and AED 3m today, the sensible planning window is still now, not the week the return is due — because the first period under the ordinary rules is also the first period in which deductible expenses, accounting adjustments and the AED 375,000 zero-rate band actually change the number you pay.

Where this leaves you

If you are a freelancer or sole establishment in the UAE, the corporate tax position comes down to one honest number and a couple of clean distinctions. Your business turnover, measured across the Gregorian year, is the number. AED 1,000,000 is the line. Salary, personal investments and personal property income never count. And if you do cross the line while staying under AED 3m of revenue, Small Business Relief usually means the tax charge is nil even though the registration and filing are real. The freelancers who run into trouble are not the ones who owe the most — they are the ones who never checked. Check honestly, keep good records, and register the moment the turnover picture says you should.

Velmont Crest is a DED-licensed UAE accounting firm providing advisory, preparation and compliance support to freelancers, sole establishments and SMEs — from corporate tax services and registration support to bookkeeping and business setup advisory. Explore more on our insights hub or reach us via our contact page.

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Disclaimer: Velmont Crest is a DED-licensed accounting firm providing advisory, preparation and compliance support services. We are not the Federal Tax Authority, a law firm, or an FTA-registered tax agent representing clients before the FTA. UAE corporate tax rules and thresholds change and depend on your specific facts — verify your position against current FTA guidance and consult a licensed professional before acting on anything in this article.

References

• UAE Ministry of Finance — Corporate Tax in the UAE
• Federal Tax Authority (FTA) — Corporate Tax
• UAE Government Portal — Corporate Tax
• Cabinet Decision No. 49 of 2023 on the categories of business conducted by a natural person subject to Corporate Tax (MoF)
• FTA Decision No. 3 of 2024 on the Corporate Tax registration timeline
• Cabinet Decision No. 75 of 2023 and its amendments on Corporate Tax administrative penalties (MoF)
• Ministerial Decision No. 73 of 2023 on Small Business Relief (MoF)
• Ministerial Decision No. 114 of 2023 on accounting standards and methods (MoF)
• Ministerial Decision No. 84 of 2025 on Audited Financial Statements (MoF)
• Cabinet Decision No. 116 of 2022 on the AED 375,000 taxable income threshold (MoF)
• FTA Corporate Tax Guide CTGTNP1 — Taxation of natural persons (25 November 2023)