UAE Compliance Navigator: Get Your Personalised Compliance Checklist in 2 Minutes

Building a UAE compliance checklist is not complicated once you know which four inputs drive it, but almost nobody is told what they are at formation. The obligations attach to your entity from the day the licence is issued, they sit with four different regulators, and no one of them sends you a consolidated calendar. The navigator above does that mapping; the sections below explain the rules behind each answer so you can check the output rather than take it on trust. If you would rather skip to the work, our accounting, payroll and tax service carries the whole calendar for you.

What does the Compliance Navigator actually check?

Eleven inputs, driving seven obligation sets. Jurisdiction and incorporation date determine your corporate tax registration deadline and your audit position. Financial year end fixes the return date. Rolling twelve-month revenue drives VAT, Small Business Relief and the audit threshold. Headcount triggers payroll, WPS and pension duties. Activity determines AML. Related-party transactions determine transfer pricing. Your twelve-month intention determines whether you are building a calendar or closing one down.

What it does not do is give advice on your facts. It applies published rules to the answers you give, which is enough to tell you what to look at and roughly when — and not enough to file anything. Where a figure is still moving, the output carries a [VERIFY] marker rather than a confident number, because a plausible wrong date is worse than an honest gap.

It also runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is transmitted, nothing is stored, and refreshing the page clears it. That is deliberate: a compliance gap analysis contains enough about a business that it should not sit on somebody else’s server by default.

Which corporate tax deadlines apply to your company?

Two dates matter, and they are set by different things. Registration is keyed to incorporation; the return is keyed to your financial year end. Neither depends on whether you made a profit.

The return follows nine months after your financial year end: 30 September for a 31 December year end, 31 December for 31 March, 31 March for 30 June. Late filing costs AED 500 per month for the first twelve months and AED 1,000 per month from month thirteen, with unpaid tax accruing 14% per annum applied monthly. A first tax period can legitimately run from six to eighteen months for a company incorporated mid-year, which means the first return often falls much later than founders expect — but the registration deadline is unaffected by that. Corporate tax filing starts at AED 249, and registration is AED 199.

When does VAT registration become mandatory?

Once taxable supplies and imports exceed AED 375,000 over the previous rolling twelve months, or once you expect to exceed that within the next 30 days. You then have 30 days to apply. Voluntary registration opens at AED 187,500 of taxable supplies or taxable expenses.

Two things about that test catch people. It is rolling, not calendar — you can cross it in the middle of a quarter and be liable before your accountant next looks at the numbers. And nobody monitors it for you: the FTA does not warn you, and your bank certainly does not. That monitoring is why the navigator asks about revenue in bands rather than in the abstract.

Once registered you file within 28 days of each tax period end, quarterly for most businesses. Late filing is AED 1,000 first offence and AED 2,000 on repeat within 24 months; late payment accrues 14% per annum charged monthly under Cabinet Decision No. 129 of 2025. Anything you read quoting 2% plus 4% plus 1% per day describes a schedule that no longer exists. VAT filing from AED 149; registration AED 199.

Do you need audited financial statements?

Possibly twice over, for two different reasons and on two different dates. Your licensing authority may require an audit as a renewal condition, and the FTA may require one for corporate tax purposes. Satisfying one does not satisfy the other.

Most Dubai free zones will not renew a licence without audited financial statements from an auditor they have approved, typically three to six months after year end. Separately, Ministerial Decision No. 84 of 2025 requires audited financial statements for Qualifying Free Zone Persons and for taxable persons above a revenue threshold [VERIFY the exact threshold against the Ministry of Finance before relying on it]. Mainland companies below that threshold often have no audit obligation at all — which is worth confirming before paying for one.

The cost of the audit is set almost entirely by the state of your bookkeeping rather than by the auditor’s rate. Clean books make it a review; gappy books make it a reconstruction, billed by the hour. See free zone audit services for the zones we are approved across.

What changes if you are in a free zone?

Not the registration and not the filing — a free zone company is a taxable person like any other. What changes is the rate available on qualifying income, and the annual test you have to pass to keep it.

The QFZP conditions come from Cabinet Decision 100/2023 and Ministerial Decision 229/2025: adequate substance in the zone, qualifying activities, audited financial statements and the de minimis test, all evidenced annually. There is no nil-rate band on a QFZP’s non-qualifying income — it is taxed at 9% from the first dirham. For some smaller free zone companies the arithmetic actually favours giving up QFZP status and electing Small Business Relief instead, which is worth modelling rather than assuming.

What do you owe once you hire someone?

Three things start on the first employment contract: WPS-compliant payroll, gratuity accrual, and — for UAE and GCC nationals — pension registration. None of them is included in the visa your setup agent processed.

Wages must reach the employee within 15 days of the end of the pay period, transmitted as a Salary Information File through an approved agent bank or exchange house. Paying the right amount by ordinary bank transfer is not compliance: outside WPS, MOHRE does not see the payment, and the first consequence is a freeze on new work permits rather than a fine — which stops hiring and visa renewals while you are still trading. Per-worker fines follow [VERIFY the current MOHRE schedule].

Gratuity accrues from month one at 21 days’ basic wage per year for the first five years and 30 days’ thereafter, capped at two years’ pay and payable within 14 days of the last working day. It has to sit in the accounts as a liability from the first hire, not appear when someone resigns. Payroll and WPS from AED 25 per employee, plus GPSSA registration within 30 days of the start date.

Which accounting records must exist, and from when?

From the date of incorporation, regardless of revenue. Proper records are required under the Tax Procedures Law and the Corporate Tax Law independently of whether you have invoiced anyone, and failure to keep them is a standalone penalty of AED 10,000, rising to AED 20,000 for a repeated violation within 24 months.

The practical argument outweighs the legal one. Your VAT return, corporate tax return, audit file and payroll register are all extracts from the same ledger. If it does not exist, none of them can be produced accurately, and reconstructing nine months of history from bank statements reliably costs three to four times what maintaining it in real time would have — and produces worse numbers. Records must then be retained for 7 years from the end of the relevant tax period, including after the company closes.

Does your activity trigger AML obligations?

If you are a Designated Non-Financial Business or Profession, yes — continuously, from the day you licence. The categories are real estate brokers and agents, dealers in precious metals and stones, auditors and accountants, and corporate service providers.

The obligation is a programme, not a form: goAML registration, customer due diligence files kept current, a documented business risk assessment, a beneficial ownership register, an appointed compliance officer, staff training and suspicious transaction reporting. Penalties under Federal Decree-Law No. 20 of 2018 run from AED 50,000 to AED 5,000,000 per violation — the widest range any newly licensed company faces, and the obligation most often missed entirely because nobody at formation checks whether the activity codes put you inside it. AML compliance for DNFBPs from AED 349.

Do you have transfer pricing exposure?

If you transact with a related party at all, yes — the arm’s length principle has no threshold. What the thresholds determine is how much documentation you have to produce, not whether the rule applies.

The “AED 3 million transfer pricing threshold” that circulates on UAE advisory sites does not exist. It appears to be a confusion with the Small Business Relief revenue ceiling, which is an entirely different rule. Management fees between group entities, shareholder loans, cost recharges and the use of a related party’s premises are all related-party transactions whether or not anyone labelled them that way at the time. See UAE transfer pricing.

Which obligations no longer exist?

Two that are still being sold, and one that never existed. The navigator flags all three under “Not required”, because knowing what to stop paying for is worth as much as knowing what to start.

Economic Substance Regulations were abolished for financial years ending after 31 December 2022 by Cabinet Decision No. 98 of 2024. An annual ESR notification and report for a 2024, 2025 or 2026 financial year is not a live requirement. The only legitimate residual work is closing out 2019–2022 filings and pursuing refunds of penalties imposed for post-2022 periods.

The 51% UAE national sponsor was abolished for most mainland activities by Federal Decree-Law No. 32 of 2021. 100% foreign ownership is the default and a mainland LLC may have a single shareholder. A small number of strategic-impact activities still carry ownership conditions — so the right response to a nominee arrangement on your quote is to ask which activity and which rule, not to assume either way.

And there is no UAE personal income tax. A founder drawing salary or dividends from their own company files no individual return on that income. Resident natural persons come within corporate tax only on UAE business income once turnover exceeds AED 1 million in a calendar year.

What does executing the plan cost?

Between roughly AED 8,000 and AED 10,000 a year for a small company doing everything on time, before any audit fee. The same company missing the same deadlines is past AED 22,000 in penalties with nothing delivered.

What if the navigator says you are already late?

Act on it rather than waiting for the FTA to write. Fixed penalties do not grow, but filing and payment penalties accrue monthly, so the order of operations matters more than the speed: register, then rebuild the books, then file, then deal with the penalty.

1. Confirm the real dates — incorporation date from the licence itself, year end from the memorandum, and the month any threshold was crossed. Most catch-up work starts with a founder holding the wrong date.
2. Register first, argue second — the AED 10,000 late registration penalty is a one-off that does not increase, and it is only issued once you register. Delaying does not avoid it.
3. Rebuild the ledger — from bank statements, invoices, contracts and payroll. This is the longest step and it determines whether the returns you file are defensible.
4. File everything outstanding — each missed VAT period and the corporate tax return. Filing stops the monthly escalation on filing penalties immediately.
5. Then handle the penalties — check whether any FTA relief or waiver initiative applies before assuming it does not [VERIFY current initiatives with the FTA].
6. Put one calendar in place — so the next twelve months are routine. This is the step people skip after the relief of catching up.

For the fuller version of each of these, see compliance after a trade licence in Dubai, and what ongoing support a UAE company needs for the steady-state year once you are caught up.