Time is running out to submit tax returns
Some 90,000 registered businesses need to submit their tax returns by April 29 to avoid paying administrative penalties, the UAE’s Federal Tax Authority said yesterday.
The FTA called on businesses whose tax periods ended on March 31 to pay their taxes immediately to ensure payments reach the authority before the deadline. Payments have to be processed through banks and will take time to reach the FTA, it said. The authority also urged businesses to check their tax periods and deadlines for submitting tax returns on its website. “The majority of registered businesses included in quarterly tax periods are small and medium enterprises,” the FTA’s director general Khalid Al Bustani said in a statement.
“The authority sought to streamline the procedures of filing tax returns and paying taxes to encourage taxable persons to comply and carry out their transactions by themselves electronically to meet their tax obligations in mere minutes and with four simple steps.” The UAE is introducing taxes to help offset the effects of lower oil prices, which has reduced government income from hydrocarbons and widened the fiscal deficit.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia are the only GCC states to introduce 5 per cent VAT at the start of this year and excise taxes in 2017, although all member countries signed up to implement the levies by 2019.
The FTA has recorded a 98.8 per cent compliance rate on VAT returns filed to date, meaning that the vast majority of returns are finalised, Mr Al Bustani said earlier this month.
This is one of the highest compliance rates in the world, he said at the time.
More than 275,000 UAE businesses have registered for VAT, however, tens of thousands have yet to do so and will be liable to government penalties, Mr Al Bustani said earlier in April.
The FTA estimated last July that around 350,000 businesses would be subject to VAT and had to register before the end of 2017, which means almost 75,000 companies could be in breach of the new regulations.