Insights Inventory
Inventory Shrinkage UAE: Retail & FMCG Benchmarks and the CT Deductibility Test
Inventory shrinkage benchmarks for UAE retail and FMCG — investigation playbook, pilferage vs wastage, VAT on stock write-offs and the corporate tax test.
Key takeaways
- UAE retail and FMCG shrinkage that stays low and stable is normal; a rising or unexplained rate indicates structural failure.
- Shrinkage categories: theft (external + internal), mis-receipt, mis-issue, system error, damage and expiry.
- CT deductibility requires investigation memo, root-cause categorisation and approval at appropriate level.
- VAT treatment of written-off stock depends on the cause; genuine, documented losses are generally not a deemed supply.
- Untraced 'mystery' shrinkage with no investigation is routinely disallowed by FTA inspectors.
- Loss-prevention programmes can meaningfully reduce shrinkage when properly implemented and sustained.
Inventory shrinkage is one of the most damaging and accounting-complex problems in UAE retail and FMCG. A Dubai supermarket chain doing AED 200 million in annual sales, running at a 1.5% shrinkage rate, loses AED 3 million in stock every year without a matching sale. For an FMCG distributor on thin margins, that same percentage can wipe out the full year’s net profit. And under UAE Corporate Tax, bulk shrinkage write-offs without a supporting investigation get routinely disallowed by FTA inspectors — turning an operational loss into a tax loss as well.
This guide gives UAE retail and FMCG SME owners, finance leads and loss-prevention managers the benchmarks, the investigation playbook, the VAT treatment of write-offs and the CT deductibility test, so shrinkage becomes a managed metric instead of a year-end fire.
What counts as shrinkage
Inventory shrinkage is the gap between book stock (what the system says you have) and physical stock (what is on the shelves and in the warehouse), after legitimate transactions are reconciled. By definition, it is the unaccounted loss. The causes fall into six categories — each with its own operational fix and its own accounting and CT treatment:
| Category | Description | Primary Control |
|---|---|---|
| External theft | Shoplifting, hold-ups, organised retail crime | EAS, CCTV, staff vigilance, store layout |
| Internal theft | Staff theft, fraud, collusion | Background checks, exception reporting, dual controls, surprise audits |
| Mis-receipt | Receiving fewer units than billed | GRN three-way matching, vendor scorecards, supplier audit |
| Mis-issue | Picking wrong SKU or quantity | Barcode-driven picking, blind picks, pick verification |
| Damage and expiry | Physical destruction, best-before passage | Rotation discipline, FIFO physical flow, environmental controls |
| System error | Wrong ERP postings, configuration errors | ERP audit, posting controls, segregation of duties |
Two older words for parts of this still turn up constantly on UAE stock reports, and it is worth being precise about what each one means, because auditors and inspectors read them differently. Pilferage is the theft of small quantities over time, usually by staff or by customers taking one or two units rather than emptying a shelf — the pilferage definition matters here because the loss is individually trivial and cumulatively serious, which is exactly why it survives in the numbers for months before anyone notices.
Wastage is different: it is stock that was never stolen at all but became unsaleable in your possession, through expiry, spoilage, breakage, over-portioning in a kitchen or trimming loss in food and jewellery. Wastage meaning “loss without theft” is the useful distinction, because the two need opposite fixes. Pilferage responds to controls and supervision. Wastage responds to rotation discipline, ordering accuracy and process design. Lumping both under one shrinkage line is how businesses end up buying CCTV to solve an expiry problem.
Start every shrinkage investigation with categorisation. An undifferentiated “shrinkage” write-off tells nobody anything — it’s the accounting equivalent of a shrug. A categorised loss tells operations where to spend on controls, and tells the FTA inspector the loss is real, investigated and documented.
How to calculate your inventory shrinkage rate
Before you can benchmark inventory shrinkage, you have to measure it, and most UAE SMEs quote the number loosely. The standard shrinkage rate is the value of stock that has gone missing over a period, divided by sales for the same period, shown as a percentage. Take your book inventory — what the perpetual system says you hold — subtract the physical count value, and the gap, once legitimate transactions are reconciled, is your shrinkage in dirhams. Divide that by net sales for the period and multiply by 100.
Worked through: a Dubai convenience store with book stock of AED 820,000, a physical count of AED 806,000 and quarterly sales of AED 1.4 million carries AED 14,000 of shrinkage, or a rate of 1.0%. Some operators divide by cost of goods sold rather than sales; both are defensible, but pick one and hold it steady so your trend line stays comparable.
Measure at the level you intend to act on — by store, by category, by SKU class — not just one blended company figure. A 1.5% blended rate can hide a single location running at 4%, and it is the location number, not the average, that tells your loss-prevention team where to go first.
One caveat for larger chains: if your book inventory is estimated rather than unit-costed — as it is under the retail inventory method, where a cost-to-retail percentage is applied to stock held at retail value — part of the variance you measure can be an out-of-date margin percentage rather than stock that has actually gone. Refresh the percentage before you treat the gap as shrinkage.
Shrinkage that climbs for no traceable reason — rather than a single elevated reading — points to structural failure: internal theft ring, supplier collusion, systemic process gap, or accounting reconciliation error. The investigation there is forensic, not routine. Jewellery and gold dealers sit apart from the rest of retail here, given the daily weight reconciliation discipline covered in gold jewellery accounting.
A modest, stable shrinkage rate is operational reality. A rate that suddenly jumps is a story — and the FTA will want to know which story.
How UAE inventory shrinkage compares with global benchmarks
Owners often ask whether inventory shrinkage in the UAE runs worse than elsewhere. Broadly, it sits in line with international retail experience, though the precise figures vary by survey and market. The mix of causes is comparable too — external theft, internal theft and administrative error account for most of the loss in almost every market.
Where the UAE has its own texture is on the compliance side. Two features change how the same physical loss lands on your accounts. First, VAT: whether input tax recovered on missing stock has to be adjusted depends on the cause of the loss and the UAE deemed-supply rules — a compliance step that does not exist in the same form in every jurisdiction. Second, corporate tax is young here — Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 applies to financial years starting on or after 1 June 2023 — so many UAE SMEs are documenting shrinkage write-offs to an evidentiary standard for the first time.
The practical read: your operational shrinkage figure can look perfectly normal by global standards while your documentation trails behind. Getting the investigation file and the free zone or mainland corporate tax treatment right is where the UAE-specific work actually sits.
Six steps to a defensible investigation
Undocumented shrinkage is the single biggest CT and audit risk. A defensible playbook fires six steps on every variance above threshold:
Step 1 — Variance Detection
The trigger is a cycle-count variance above threshold — tighter for A-class SKUs than for C-class (see our cycle counting programme guide). The variance report carries SKU, location, system quantity, physical quantity, variance and date.
Step 2 — Transaction Trace
The investigator pulls the last 7-30 days of transactions for the affected SKU from the ERP: receipts, issues, transfers, returns, refunds, adjustments. Most variances trace back to a single mis-receipt, mis-issue or unrecorded transfer.
Step 3 — Physical and CCTV Review
If the transaction trace does not explain it, move to physical evidence: walk the warehouse zone for misplaced stock, verify bins, review CCTV across the receipt and issue windows. UAE warehouse CCTV usually has a limited retention window before footage is overwritten. The investigation has to land inside it.
Step 4 — Staff Interview
Where transaction trace and CCTV suggest staff involvement (intentional or accidental), interviews follow under UAE labour law procedure — HR-attended, documented, and conducted by a manager not in the staff member’s direct reporting line.
Step 5 — Categorisation and Documentation
The investigator categorises the loss into one of the six categories above, documents the finding in a written investigation memo (one page minimum: variance summary, trace findings, evidence reviewed, conclusion, corrective action) and submits for approval.
Step 6 — Posting, Approval and VAT Adjustment
Once approved at the appropriate level (see authority matrix below), the accounting entries fire:
- Inventory adjustment: Dr COGS-Shrinkage (categorised sub-ledger) / Cr Inventory.
- VAT deemed-supply adjustment (only where one is due): where the loss is a deemed supply — e.g. stock diverted to non-business use or given away — Dr VAT Adjustment Expense / Cr VAT Payable (output tax), computed as Stock value × 5%. Genuine, documented losses are generally not a supply and need no adjustment.
- If theft: parallel entry for any insurance recoverable Dr Other Receivables / Cr COGS-Shrinkage.
The investigation memo, approval evidence and accounting reference are filed together. This is the package the FTA inspector will request.
Who signs off, and at what value
Authority to approve shrinkage write-offs should be scaled to materiality and documented in the inventory policy. An example structure:
| Single Loss Value | Approval Authority |
|---|---|
| Up to AED 5,000 | Store manager / warehouse supervisor |
| AED 5,001 - 25,000 | Area manager / operations manager |
| AED 25,001 - 100,000 | Finance manager |
| AED 100,001 - 500,000 | General manager / CFO |
| AED 500,001 - 2,000,000 | CEO / board committee |
| Above AED 2,000,000 | Board approval, shareholder notification |
Aggregate annual shrinkage above the GM threshold usually triggers board reporting regardless of individual loss size. The matrix shuts down single-point-of-failure fraud (a store manager approving their own theft cover-up) and pulls material losses up to senior scrutiny.
Will the FTA accept it, or won’t they?
UAE Corporate Tax under Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 allows deduction for expenses incurred wholly and exclusively for business purposes, with documentation. For shrinkage write-offs, the FTA test in practice is:
| Test | Pass Requirement |
|---|---|
| Real loss | Physical evidence — count sheets, CCTV, damage report |
| Business purpose | Loss occurred in normal trading operations |
| Categorisation | Each write-off identifies root cause |
| Approval | Authority matrix followed; signed approval on file |
| Documentation | Investigation memo per loss event |
| VAT treatment | Deemed-supply position checked; any output tax posted |
| Insurance | Recoveries accounted for; net loss only deducted |
| Pattern | No suggestion of artificial loss to reduce CT |
Bulk year-end shrinkage adjustments without a supporting investigation fail tests 3, 4 and 5 — and the FTA disallows them, adds the amount back to taxable income, and can apply administrative penalties on top. The numbers add up fast: a AED 3 million annual shrinkage disallowed at the 9% CT rate is AED 270,000 of additional tax, before any penalty.
Free zone and mainland shrinkage: does the CT treatment differ?
A frequent question from operators in DMCC, JAFZA and the other zones: does inventory shrinkage get treated differently for a free zone company? The write-off mechanics are the same — real loss, categorised, investigated, approved, documented — because the deductibility principle in Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 does not change with your address. What differs is the surrounding tax position.
A Qualifying Free Zone Person taxed at 0% on qualifying income still has to keep the deduction file, because a shrinkage write-off that is later challenged can feed into the de minimis and qualifying-income tests that protect that 0% rate. Sloppy stock losses are not a free pass just because the headline rate is nil — see our free zone QFZP corporate tax explainer for how the tests hold together.
VAT adds a second wrinkle for stock held in a designated zone. Goods inside a VAT designated zone can sit outside the scope of UAE VAT until they enter the mainland, so any input-tax adjustment on a loss depends on whether input tax was recovered in the first place. The mechanics for free zone inventory and designated zones are worth reading before you post a shrinkage entry against designated-zone stock.
Levers that actually move the number
Structured loss-prevention programmes in UAE retail and FMCG SMEs can meaningfully cut shrinkage over a sustained period. In rough payback order, this is where the money goes.
Exception reporting on POS data is usually the cheapest win. Excessive voids, refunds, manual price overrides, no-sale opens and training-mode usage all show up in standard POS reports, and a daily review of them catches internal theft early. Source tagging and electronic article surveillance come next: EAS at the store exit catches a measurable share of customer theft and works as a deterrent besides, and applying the tags at source, in the supplier warehouse or DC, is cheaper than doing it in-store. CCTV earns its keep only when someone actually watches it — cameras at receiving bays, picking areas, POS terminals and exits, with a daily or weekly review of exception events, and modern AI-driven systems now flag the anomalies for you.
Then there are the operational controls. Blind cycle counting, where counters never see the system quantity, produces more reliable variance data and surfaces shrinkage faster (the cycle counting programme design guide covers the mechanics). Vendor scorecards track receipt variances by supplier so that persistent under-shippers either correct or lose the business — plenty of UAE FMCG SMEs bleed unmeasured inventory at the receiving door simply because nobody is tracking it.
Background checks and reference verification catch a meaningful slice of internal theft risk before it walks through the door, which matters in a hiring market as high-velocity as UAE warehousing and retail. And unannounced cash and stock audits, run by an internal audit function or your accounting and bookkeeping advisor, work as both deterrent and detective control.
Loss patterns by format
| Sector | Shrinkage Pattern | Dominant Control |
|---|---|---|
| Supermarket | External theft (fresh, BWS), internal theft (POS shrinkage) | EAS + POS exception reporting |
| Convenience | Inside theft, short-changing | Cash drops, dual sign-off, CCTV |
| Pharmacy | Internal theft of controlled drugs and high-value OTC | Controlled-drug register, dual sign-out, daily count |
| Electronics | Internal theft and customer hand-out fraud | Serial-tracked stock, RFID, dispatch verification |
| Fashion | Trial-room theft, tag tampering | Item counts in/out of trial rooms, EAS |
| FMCG warehouse | Mis-receipt and damage | Three-way match, vendor scorecards, damage logs |
| Construction materials | Site loss and unrecorded transfers | Site stock control, weighbridge for bulk |
| Gold and jewellery | Weight loss in cleaning, gem swap | Daily weight reconciliation, hallmark verification |
Reporting theft to the police, and what the insurer will want
Where the investigation concludes that stock was stolen rather than mislaid, the file needs two things finance teams routinely skip: a police report and an insurance notification, both raised promptly.
Theft is reported to the police of the emirate where the loss happened — Dubai Police for a Dubai store or warehouse, Abu Dhabi Police for an Abu Dhabi site, and the emirate-level force in Sharjah, Ajman, Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimah or Umm Al Quwain. Most UAE forces now accept a report through a smart app or an online portal as well as at a station. What matters for your file is the reference number and a copy of the report, because that is the one document an FTA inspector or an external auditor can place against your write-off without taking your word for it.
File it while the evidence is still live. A report raised weeks after the variance surfaced — CCTV overwritten, the staff member already off payroll — is a far weaker document than one raised in the same week, and the AED value of the deduction it supports is identical either way.
The insurance side runs on its own clock. Stock policies written in the UAE market set a notification window, an excess per claim and evidentiary conditions of their own. Two clauses are worth reading before you need them rather than after: whether unexplained disappearance is covered at all, and whether employee dishonesty sits inside the policy or requires a separate extension. On the books, an insurance recoverable is only recognised once recovery is virtually certain — not when the claim is submitted — so an open claim usually leaves the gross loss sitting in COGS until the insurer confirms.
What your external auditor will ask for at year end
Shrinkage is one of the first things a UAE statutory auditor tests, because it sits at the junction of a physical asset, a management estimate and a tax deduction. Where inventory is material to the financial statements, the auditor is expected to attend the physical count rather than accept your sheets on trust — so the count itself is an audit event, not just an operations one.
Expect the request list to run roughly as follows:
| Auditor request | What satisfies it |
|---|---|
| Written count instructions | Dated procedure issued before the count, naming teams and zones |
| Count sheets | Pre-numbered, blind (no system quantity printed), signed by counter and checker |
| Cut-off evidence | Last GRN and last delivery-note numbers at the count moment, both directions |
| Variance report | System vs physical by SKU, with the AED value of each variance |
| Investigation memos | One per variance above threshold, naming root cause |
| Approval evidence | Signature at the level the authority matrix requires |
| Write-off journal | Posting reference tying back to the memo and the approval |
| VAT position | Note recording whether a deemed supply arose, and why or why not |
Cut-off is where UAE SMEs lose the most marks. Goods received into the Dubai warehouse on the evening of the count but invoiced the following week, or picked and staged for despatch but not yet shipped, land in the variance as phantom shrinkage — and once they are in the write-off, the FTA is being asked to allow a deduction for stock that never actually left. Record the last inbound and outbound document numbers at the moment counting starts, and reconcile both tails afterwards.
Where shrinkage fits in the inventory stack
Shrinkage management is one piece of a broader inventory accounting framework, and it doesn’t work in isolation. The companion design points — chart of accounts (with a dedicated Shrinkage sub-ledger), GRNI discipline, IAS 2 cost-flow, perpetual system architecture, cycle counting and obsolete-stock provisioning — sit in our inventory management UAE SME playbook, with deeper notes in perpetual vs periodic, cycle counting programmes and obsolete stock provisioning.
You cannot manage shrinkage without cycle counting (no early detection), cannot measure it without perpetual inventory (no baseline), cannot deduct it for CT without an approval workflow (no defensibility), and cannot get the VAT treatment right without applying the deemed-supply rules (no compliance). All four pieces, together.
The monthly dashboard your ops and finance teams will both read
The monthly management pack should include, at minimum, a shrinkage dashboard:
| Metric | Definition | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Period shrinkage (AED) | Sum of shrinkage write-offs in the month | < benchmark × sales |
| YTD shrinkage % of sales | Cumulative shrinkage / cumulative sales | < industry benchmark |
| Top 10 shrinkage SKUs | SKUs with highest absolute variance | Investigated within week |
| Shrinkage by category | Split across the six categories | Trend down on theft and mis-pick |
| Shrinkage by location | Variance by store, warehouse, zone | Identify hotspot locations |
| Investigations open | Count of incidents pending closure | < 5 per location |
| Investigations closed | Count of incidents closed in month | High; aim for 90%+ within 14 days |
The dashboard puts shrinkage in front of operations and finance jointly. That joint visibility is what drives the reduction. Shrinkage that only ever surfaces as a year-end accounting line never gets better.
How Velmont Crest helps
We work with UAE retail and FMCG SMEs on the full shrinkage management stack: investigation playbook design, categorisation taxonomy, approval matrix design, VAT deemed-supply review, VAT services in Dubai reconciliation, corporate tax services UAE deductibility memos, audit-ready workpapers and monthly dashboard design.
Engagements start with a no-fee 30-minute call to review your current shrinkage rate, write-off practice and CT exposure. If a framework redesign or remediation makes sense, we scope a fixed-fee project under our dedicated inventory accounting service. For ongoing support, the monthly shrinkage review folds into a retained accounting and bookkeeping engagement.
We are an advisory and preparation practice — not a loss-prevention operator or physical security provider. For LP delivery (EAS, CCTV, store audits) we coordinate with specialist UAE LP firms. For formal FTA representation we coordinate with a registered tax agent.
Shrinkage is operational reality for every UAE retailer and distributor. But a modest, well-documented rate is the difference between a managed expense and a structural haemorrhage — and between a deductible expense and a disallowed write-off. Build the playbook, run the investigation, document the categorisation, post the adjustment. The FTA, the auditor and the P&L all reward the discipline.
Frequently asked questions
- What is inventory shrinkage?
- It's the gap between what your system says you have and what's actually on the shelf, once every legitimate transaction has been accounted for. In plain terms, stock that vanished somewhere between purchase and sale. The usual suspects are theft (customers, staff, the odd light-fingered supplier), receiving fewer units than you were billed for, picking the wrong SKU, dud ERP postings, plus damage and expiry. As a share of sales, it stays low and stable for UAE retail and FMCG businesses when things are running normally.
- What is the UAE benchmark for retail shrinkage?
- It varies significantly by format, so no single number applies across the board. Supermarkets and hypermarkets sit at the higher end — high SKU count, fresh categories, open self-service, all of which make stock easier to lose. Specialty retail like electronics, jewellery and pharmacy tends to run lower, because higher-value SKUs justify tighter controls. Once the rate climbs without an obvious cause, something is structurally wrong — an internal theft ring, supplier collusion, a process gap, a reconciliation error — and that calls for forensic investigation rather than a quiet write-off.
- Is inventory shrinkage tax-deductible in the UAE?
- It can be, provided you can show your working. Under Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 an expense is deductible when it's incurred wholly and exclusively for business and backed by documentation. A shrinkage write-off clears that bar with an investigation memo naming the root cause, supporting evidence (damage report, expiry list, CCTV log, police report for theft), sign-off at the right authority level and a clean accounting entry behind it. The bulk 'mystery' write-off with none of that behind it gets disallowed routinely at audit.
- What VAT adjustment is required for lost or destroyed stock?
- It depends on how the stock was lost. Genuine, well-documented losses — theft, breakage, expiry — are generally not treated as a supply under UAE VAT, so the input tax you originally recovered usually stands. Where stock is instead put to non-business or private use, or given away, that can be a deemed supply under Article 11 of the VAT Decree-Law, and output tax may fall due at the standard 5% rate. The practical point is to document the cause of every write-off so the right treatment can be applied and evidenced, and to confirm the position against current FTA guidance.
- What records should the shrinkage investigation produce?
- A file an inspector can open and follow end to end. The original variance report from the cycle count or year-end count. A written memo naming the root cause and the evidence behind it — CCTV logs, transaction history, interview notes, a police FIR where there's theft, supplier correspondence for receipt issues. The loss category, the corrective action, an approval signature at the right level, the accounting posting reference, and any VAT deemed-supply computation. Whatever's missing from that list is exactly the piece the FTA will ask about.
- What approval level is required for shrinkage write-offs?
- Set the levels in your inventory policy and scale them to materiality. One workable structure: store manager up to AED 5,000 per incident, area manager AED 5,000-25,000, finance manager AED 25,000-100,000, general manager AED 100,000-500,000, board or shareholder above AED 500,000. Tiering it this way stops a store manager approving their own theft cover-up and pulls the big losses up to senior eyes. One thing people forget: the approval has to travel with the accounting entry. Posted without it, the write-off is just an unauthorised transaction sitting there waiting to be flagged.
- How is internal staff theft handled?
- Once an investigation pins the loss on a staff member, a few things run in parallel. Termination follows UAE labour-law procedure. Recovery action can mean a gratuity deduction under Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 where the loss is proven and authorised. A police complaint gets filed where that's warranted, and someone takes a hard look at whatever control gap let it happen in the first place. On the books the stock goes to a Shrinkage-Internal Theft sub-ledger, and the CT deduction generally holds because the loss is genuine — expect the FTA to read the file closely all the same. Any insurance recovery offsets the hit.
- What is the difference between shrinkage and obsolete stock?
- Shrinkage is stock that's physically gone — units that left the warehouse with no matching sale, transfer or authorised write-off. Obsolete stock is the opposite: it's still sitting there, you just can't sell it at or above cost — end-of-life products, slow movers, damaged-but-saleable items, anything past its market window. Both end in a provision or write-off, but the timing differs. Shrinkage hits the P&L the moment it's detected. Obsolescence is a provision against carrying value, with the actual write-off coming later when the stock is finally disposed of. Our companion guide on obsolete stock provisioning covers it in full.
- What is the difference between pilferage and wastage?
- Pilferage is theft in small quantities over time — a few units at a time, by staff or by customers, individually trivial and cumulatively expensive. Wastage is stock that nobody stole but that became unsaleable while you held it: expiry, spoilage, breakage, over-portioning in a kitchen, trimming loss in food or jewellery. Both land in the shrinkage line and both need documenting before a corporate tax deduction will hold, but the operational fixes are opposites. Pilferage responds to supervision, exception reporting, dual controls and CCTV. Wastage responds to rotation discipline, ordering accuracy and process design. Report them separately, or you will end up spending on cameras to solve an expiry problem.
- Can shrinkage be reduced through loss prevention?
- It can, and meaningfully — a structured programme can materially cut a UAE retail or FMCG SME's shrinkage over a sustained period. What does the work is a spread of controls: source tagging and EAS at the store, CCTV with someone actually reviewing it at the chokepoints, POS exception reporting on voids and refunds and manual price overrides, background checks on warehouse hires, blind cycle counts, mystery shopper audits, and supplier receipt verification scored against vendor scorecards. On a single store the investment case usually stacks up over time.
- How does shrinkage interact with cycle counting?
- Cycle counting is how you catch shrinkage while it's still catchable. Skip it and the loss builds up unseen all year, only showing its face at the annual count, by which point the variance is months old and effectively impossible to investigate. Run a disciplined programme and the variances surface within days, while the CCTV still exists and people can still remember the shift in question. Our companion guide on programme design has the operational detail.
- What are the typical shrinkage categories by industry?
- It shifts a lot by format. In supermarkets, external customer theft and internal staff theft are typically the two largest categories, with supplier and receipt errors, admin errors, and damage and spoilage making up smaller shares. Specialty electronics tends to split internal and external theft roughly evenly, with receipt errors and damage taking the rest. Pharmacy is the outlier — internal theft of high-value stock tends to dominate, ahead of external theft, expiry and admin error. Since each profile points loss prevention somewhere different, categorising is what tells you where to actually spend.
- Can Velmont Crest design a shrinkage investigation and CT-deductibility framework?
- Yes. We handle the advisory and preparation side — investigation playbook design, the categorisation taxonomy, an approval matrix, the VAT deemed-supply review, audit-ready workpapers and CT deductibility memos. We work alongside your operations team and whichever loss-prevention partners you use; we're not your LP officer or your physical security provider, and we won't pretend to be. Nor are we a registered FTA tax agent — for formal FTA representation we bring in a licensed firm. Keeping that line clear is what keeps the scope honest and the fees sensible for a small business.
Filed under: inventory shrinkage, retail shrinkage uae, fmcg shrinkage benchmark, ct deductibility inventory, vat on stock write-offs, stock loss investigation, shrinkage playbook dubai
Published · Updated
