UAE Corporate Tax return deadlines are calculated from your financial year-end, not the calendar year, which is where most businesses trip up. A business with a financial year ending 31 December 2025 must file by 30 September 2026 – nine months after year-end.
Late filing triggers an automatic AED 500 per month penalty (rising to AED 1,000 per month after twelve months), and late payment adds a further 14% per annum on the outstanding tax. Both penalties apply regardless of whether any tax was actually due.
The most common cause of missed deadlines is not disorganisation but simply losing track of which entity has which year-end when a group has multiple UAE entities on different financial calendars. We maintain a compliance calendar for every client group for exactly this reason – if you are managing this in a spreadsheet, it may be worth a conversation.
