Are you tired of receiving emails telling you to file your corporate tax return early? You might have already done so. Months ago.
Service providers are clogging up your inbox, hollering that you must file by the end of September 2025. Actually, your filing deadline could be the end of any month, but the majority are likely to be this date as most have calendar year ends.
When September ends it might all calm down, but as business owners, you should be aware of your filing deadline. In the meantime, ignore the noise.
Occasionally, there is an accidental window into the future. A few days before the deadline to file your August VAT return, the Federal Tax Authority (FTA) portal popped up with a screen seeking revalidation of the information you have already provided to it.
Recently, you were asked to confirm your entity’s main trading activity, this from a more useful extended list of options. Some entities are still being asked … a few repeatedly, even after answering.
You may not progress into the portal if you fail to complete the reverification required. Sometimes, you have the option to do it later, sometimes you don't.
Each portal account – not account holder – must confirm through one-time passwords that the entity’s contact details remain valid. This is both the associated email address and mobile phone number. Once requested, you have five minutes to receive and input the four-digit codes.
If they do not arrive in that time, you can ask that they be sent again. It will be a different number. You can request the code as often as you like, but you only get three attempts at inputting it before you get locked out for an unspecified amount of time. I imagine this is no more than one day. The codes may or may not appear in your inbox or on your phone in the order you requested them. Yes, I say this having been locked out.
As far as I can tell, you need to complete both at the same time. If you give up on one, you must repeat the exercise no more than 20 days later or face a penalty. This is highlighted in bold at the top of the pop-up screen with an orange backdrop.
It is useful that such information is confirmed again from time to time. I remember the experience of moving from the original FTA portal to this new one. Many details had changed. People had left the company and/or country and mobile numbers or email addresses simply did not exist any more. In some cases, it took months to resolve.
Given the reminders we are being peppered with, surely requests such as these merit such a communicative method. However, would it not be best to commence such secretarial work on the first day of a month, weeks ahead of any filing deadline rather than days before one?
Business have been facing a relentless series of compliance and tax related regimes since the January 1, 2018. VAT. Excise. Economic Substance Reporting. Anti Money Laundering. CRS/FACTA. Corporate Tax. E-Invoicing. They continue to work hard to comply, conscious that schedules of penalties exist for each.
The original time to submit one-time passwords was two minutes. This proved insufficient when first used for two reasons. Sometimes, it just takes a little longer. For this reason, it is now five minutes.
When a regime is launched for the first time, it is inevitable that the traffic will be like the first day back at school. Roads clogged up everywhere. Maybe 20 minutes for the first couple of months would be helpful.
This requirement disappeared from the portal after a day and a half. You cannot help but feel that it was launched accidentally early. That means it is still coming.
I want to finish with a message for those few entities who were required to file their first return by the end of December 2024. Your fiscal year was the launch in 2023 to the end of that calendar year.
If you were to check the portal today you will find that no return is required. If you check your registration certificate, it is likely to only detail that first tax return period. Logic will correctly tell you that the second reporting period would be for the calendar year 2024.
That means that you must complete the return no more than nine months later. The next filing date is September 30, 2025.
To get that option to appear so you can file, you must contact the FTA with screen shots to prove that you have an issue, and in a day or less, it should be resolved and you can file your return. Failure could result in a penalty.
David Daly is a partner at the Gulf Tax Accounting Group in the UAE
