What a Dubai accounting firm actually does for a foreign-owned company

What we keep on top of

Once you’re running, the ongoing numbers are the part that quietly goes wrong — missed registrations, late returns, books that aren’t in a state the authorities, a bank or an investor would accept. We keep that side in order so you can run the business.

Our in-house accounting and bookkeeping services cover:

Audit and liquidation are separate statutory jobs; we coordinate those with the audit firms we use.

The next dated obligation is e-invoicing. Under Ministerial Decision No. 244 of 2025, a business inside the e-invoicing system with revenue under AED 50 million has to appoint an Accredited Service Provider by 31 March 2027 and run the electronic invoicing system from 1 July 2027; business-to-consumer sales sit outside it for now.

That is an invoicing and bookkeeping change rather than a tax question, so it sits with us. We would rather have you on a provider and tested before the deadline than in the month of it.

The UAE side is ours — bookkeeping, VAT, corporate-tax compliance and payroll, all handled in house. Your own tax position back in the UK, Ireland or Australia is not: that needs advice from someone qualified in that country, and we work with tax partners who give it. We will put you in front of them. Nobody here, Gareth included, advises on UK, Irish or Australian tax.

VAT, in plain terms

VAT has been in place in the UAE since January 2018, at a standard rate of 5%, and the registration thresholds are published by the Federal Tax Authority. Two numbers decide whether it applies to you:

• AED 375,000 — once your taxable turnover passes this over the previous twelve months (or you expect it to within the next 30 days), registration is mandatory.
• AED 187,500 — you can register voluntarily from here, which sometimes makes sense if you’re reclaiming VAT on set-up costs.

Once registered, you charge 5% where it applies, and submit a return every quarter — monthly if the business is larger — within 28 days of the period end, under Cabinet Decision No. 52 of 2017, Articles 62 and 64. If you’re due a refund, the Federal Tax Authority (the FTA) needs a UAE bank account in the company’s name, validated by a letter from the bank confirming the account name matches the company’s FTA registration, before it will pay it.

Not every company has to register on day one, and not every sale carries VAT. We work out where you actually stand first. Registering early when you don’t have to just gives you returns to submit.

Corporate tax, in plain terms

UAE corporate tax applies to financial years starting on or after 1 June 2023. If the company isn’t a Qualifying Free Zone Person, the rate is 0% on the first AED 375,000 of taxable profit and 9% above it — that band is set by Cabinet Decision No. 116 of 2022, Article 2(1), for the purposes of Article 3(1)(a) of Federal Decree-Law 47 of 2022, the UAE Corporate Tax Law.

A few things matter for a foreign-owned company:

• Registration is its own deadline. A company set up on or after 1 March 2024 generally has to register for corporate tax within three months of being established; late registration carries an AED 10,000 penalty. That deadline is set by FTA Decision No. 3 of 2024.
• Companies set up before 1 March 2024 had a different deadline. Theirs was fixed by the month the licence was issued, whatever the year, and the dates ran from 31 May 2024 to 31 December 2024 under the same decision. They have all passed. If you are not sure the company registered in time, tell us and we will check where it stands.
• One return a year. You submit once, and pay once, within nine months of your financial year-end — no instalments. A year ending 31 December 2025 is submitted and paid by 30 September 2026.
• Free zone companies still have to deal with it. A free zone company — a free zone is one of the UAE’s designated business zones, with its own company registrar — can keep 0% on its qualifying income if it meets the Qualifying Free Zone Person conditions — real substance in the UAE, qualifying income (broadly, income from dealings with other free zone companies, and from the activities the rules list as qualifying), transfer-pricing compliance (charging market rates on anything you invoice between your own companies), and audited financial statements — but income that doesn’t qualify is taxed at 9%.
• A free zone company is not automatically tax-free. The 0% sits in Federal Decree-Law 47 of 2022 and Cabinet Decision 100 of 2023, with the qualifying and excluded activities set by Ministerial Decision 229 of 2025.
• Small Business Relief. A resident business — a company incorporated in the UAE, or managed and controlled from here — with revenue at or below AED 3,000,000 — in the relevant tax period and in every earlier one — can elect to be treated as having no taxable income, for tax periods ending on or before 31 December 2029. The relief sits under Ministerial Decision 73 of 2023 as amended by Ministerial Decision 131 of 2026, and once the AED 3,000,000 threshold is breached in any tax period the relief is gone for good.
• It isn’t available to Qualifying Free Zone Persons. That window closes with tax periods ending 31 December 2029, so if you are electing now, ask us what applies to the period after it.
• The relief doesn’t remove the filing. If you elect for Small Business Relief you still register for corporate tax, and you still submit the annual return on time.

We register you, keep the books in a state the return can be built from, and submit it. That is the UAE compliance side, and it is handled in house. Advice on your own tax position back home is a different job, and it comes from qualified tax partners we work with.

The standard your books are kept to, substance, and double tax treaties

Your books have to be kept to a recognised standard. For UAE corporate tax that standard is IFRS, the International Financial Reporting Standards. A company with revenue at or below AED 50,000,000 may use IFRS for SMEs instead, and one at or below AED 3,000,000 may use the cash basis. That is set out in Ministerial Decision 114 of 2023. We keep the books to whichever one applies, so the return and any audit are built from accounts the authorities accept.

Substance is the other word that gets used loosely. For corporate tax it means real activity in the UAE — people, premises and decisions actually here — and it is one of the Qualifying Free Zone Person conditions above. It is not a separate annual filing any more: the old Economic Substance reporting requirement was cancelled for financial years ending after 31 December 2022 by Cabinet Decision 98 of 2024, announced by the Ministry of Finance in October 2024. If someone is still selling you an ESR return, ask what for.

Double tax treaties are the third question we get. The UAE has a wide treaty network, published by the Ministry of Finance, and the UAE side of using one is ordinary compliance work — books that stand up and the return filed on time, in the company’s name. Whether a treaty actually changes your position back in the UK, Ireland or Australia is a question for a tax adviser qualified there. That part is not ours, and we will say so.

What it costs

Basic accounting and tax starts from AED 1,000 a month for a small business. An audit, where one’s needed, is usually around AED 4,000. What you actually pay depends on how much goes through the business — a company with a handful of invoices a month costs less to keep than one with hundreds, and a business with very few transactions might only need its accounts done every six months rather than monthly.

Before anything starts, we put you in front of the accountant who will actually keep your books, so you get a clear read on what you need to do, what it’ll cost, and how often you should be doing your accounts.

Audit and liquidation

Some companies have to have their financial statements audited — every DMCC company, for example, and any free zone company relying on the 0% Qualifying Free Zone Person rate. Audit is a separate statutory job. We don’t sign off our own numbers, so we bring in an outside audit firm.

If a company has reached the end of its life, closing it down properly — deregistering it, settling its obligations, getting the sign-offs from the free zone or from Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism (the DED, which licenses mainland companies), from immigration and from the Federal Tax Authority, and closing the bank account — is its own process. We run that with the same firms. A company left to lapse can leave the owner with problems later — visa renewals blocked and new applications refused, bank accounts restricted, and eventually the licence terminated and the company struck off.

Why one firm for setup and the numbers

At Start Business Services we keep the accounting in-house here in Dubai, because it means you deal with the same person every year. The person who handled your setup and your bank account stays involved afterwards — so when the first VAT return or corporate-tax return comes round, nothing has to be explained from scratch. Whoever does your books already knows how the company is owned and how it banks. You deal with the same advisor, year after year.

We don’t do forensic accounting, valuations, litigation support or the consolidation a large group needs — that work belongs with a full-service firm. We also don’t take on a backlog of old books, or take the work over part-way through from another accountant. We do a narrow set of things properly, and we would rather tell you that at the start.

“From the very first moment, everything just felt surprisingly easy and straightforward. Every step that I thought might be complicated or stressful turned out to be simple, because Gareth explained things so clearly and always had a solution ready before I even had time to worry.”

— Rimantas Petrauskas · Google review