The Relief is Temporary — the Records are Not
Small Business Relief treats an eligible business as having no taxable income where revenue does not exceed AED 3,000,000, extended to periods ending on or before 31 December 2029 by Ministerial Decision No. 131. After that: 0% on the first AED 375,000 and 9% above it, with the accounting a real computation requires.
The first substantive return a former relief-taker files is one the books have to support — and the remedy is preparation before the period begins.
File Your CT TodayWho This is for
The licence was issued, the bank account followed, and registration was assumed to sit inside the formation package — or assumed not to apply because there is no profit yet.
You are not. You may qualify for 0% on qualifying income, on conditions that must hold continuously, and the analysis has never been done against your actual revenue.
Revenue is under AED 3,000,000, the election has been made, and the regime supporting it now runs to 31 December 2029.
Bookkeeping exists as a bank statement and a folder of invoices; a return needs a computation.
How the Rates Actually Work
On taxable income up to AED 375,000.
On taxable income above AED 375,000.
Top-up tax for multinational groups with consolidated revenue of EUR 750 million or more.
And not the figure at the bottom of your management accounts — it is accounting profit adjusted under the corporate tax rules. Deductibility, interest limitation, exempt income and losses carried forward are entity-specific, established at assessment rather than assumed from a rate table.
A free zone entity meeting every condition may be taxed at 0% on its qualifying income. The conditions must hold continuously through the tax period — the status is maintained, not granted. Income that is not qualifying is taxed at 9% without the AED 375,000 band.
What's Included
How it Works
Status and deadline check
Whether the entity is registered, what its tax period is, and what is already overdue. A late registration is a different conversation from one merely due.
Registration
Filed with the Federal Tax Authority and the number issued, whether or not the company has traded, invoiced or profited.
Position analysis
Free zone or mainland; qualifying and non-qualifying income identified by stream rather than by licence; relief eligibility tested against revenue; group elections that are only available if made in time.
Books to a filing standard
Where the bookkeeping will not support a computation, the gap is closed before the return is drafted.
Computation and return
Accounting profit adjusted to taxable income, elections applied, schedules attached, return filed and payment arranged within the applicable window.
Maintenance
The conditions behind a free zone position, and the revenue level behind a relief, are monitored during the year. Both can be lost without anyone noticing.
What We Need from You
Most of this is a scan and an email — none of it needs to be perfect before we talk, and we tell you exactly what is missing after the first review.
Timeline and Cost
Registration is an administrative step and rarely the slow part. What sets the schedule is the state of the accounting records and, where a free zone position is claimed, the analysis behind it.
We do not publish statutory deadlines here: they depend on the entity and its period, and a wrong date is worse than no date. Your dates are confirmed in writing at the outset and held on a filing calendar. Fees are fixed and agreed in writing against a defined scope before we start, anchored to the work rather than to your turnover or your tax saving. Authority charges and penalties are third-party costs, shown separately at cost.
Where we conclude a free zone position will not hold, you hear it at assessment. A 0% claim that fails on review costs more than a 9% liability paid on time.
Get a Fixed QuoteWhere it Goes Wrong
The obligation attaches to the taxable person regardless of profit or trading. A dormant company still registers, and the commonest version of this is a holding entity nobody thought of as a business.
Registration is often assumed to sit inside the incorporation package. Sometimes it does; often the package ends at the licence and the establishment card. Nobody finds the gap until a penalty notice arrives, by which point the exposure is a function of how long the assumption ran.
The 0% applies to qualifying income, on conditions held continuously. When non-qualifying income surfaces during a filing, the consequence reaches the whole period rather than the single transaction — and that income is taxed at 9% without the AED 375,000 band.
It now runs to 31 December 2029. Businesses that treated the election as the answer, and so never built the accounting to compute taxable income, meet both problems at once in the first period afterwards.
A bank feed and a folder of PDFs is not a general ledger. Expenses without support, owner drawings mixed with company costs and revenue recognised on receipt rather than on supply produce an indefensible computation.
Management charges to a foreign parent, loans between commonly owned entities and assets moved within a group need a rationale recorded at the time. Reconstructing one years later, under enquiry, is far harder.
Questions
Do I have to register if my company has no profit, or has never traded?
Yes. Registration is required of taxable persons regardless of profit or trading, and filing follows registration. A nil return is still a return.
What is the corporate tax rate?
0% on taxable income up to AED 375,000 and 9% above it. A Qualifying Free Zone Person may be taxed at 0% on qualifying income where the conditions are met continuously, with non-qualifying income at 9% and no AED 375,000 band against it.
When does Small Business Relief end, and what happens then?
Extended by Ministerial Decision No. 131 (announced 7 August 2026), it now applies to tax periods ending on or before 31 December 2029. Businesses that relied on it move into the standard regime — 0% on the first AED 375,000 and 9% above — with a full computation and records to support it. The period to prepare in is the one you are in now.
My revenue is under AED 3,000,000. Does the relief apply automatically?
No. It is an election with eligibility conditions and it has to be made. Revenue below the level is necessary, not sufficient.
Is my free zone company a Qualifying Free Zone Person?
That is a conclusion from your activity, income streams and substance, not from your address. It is tested rather than assumed, and re-tested as the business changes.
I registered late. What now?
Register, establish which periods are affected, and address any penalty on its own footing. Delay is the only variable that reliably makes this worse.
Do I need an audit to file a corporate tax return?
Audit requirements depend on the free zone, the licence and the size of the business; there is no single UAE-wide rule. What the return does require is financial statements that hold up.