UAE corporate tax filing deadline: when your return is actually due

Nine months. That is the entire rule for when a UAE corporate tax return is due. It sounds simple, and for a company with a calendar financial year, it is: 31 December year end, 30 September deadline the following year. The confusion starts the moment your financial year end is not 31 December, or the moment you assume the deadline works the same way as the AED 10,000 late registration penalty everyone already warned you about. It does not. Registration, filing and payment are three separate obligations with three separate consequences, and mixing them up is how companies end up paying more than they needed to.

The 30 September 2026 deadline has passed

If your tax period ended on 31 December 2025, your deadline was 30 September 2026. That is by far the most common case, because financial years in the Emirates usually follow the calendar year. If you have not filed or paid yet, you have been late since 1 October 2026.

Two things hung on that single date, and the second one catches people out:

• filing the return through EmaraTax, and
• paying any tax that comes out of it

Both inside the same nine months. Filing on time and paying later still counts as late.

It applies even when the answer is zero. A company with no profit, a company under Small Business Relief and a free zone company on the zero percent rate all have to file. The relief affects the amount, not the obligation.

If your financial year ends on a different date, count nine months from your own year end. A tax period ending 31 March 2026 is due by 31 December 2026, one ending 30 June 2026 by 31 March 2027, and the 2026 calendar year by 30 September 2027. The UAE tax deadline calculator does it for you.

Missed the deadline? What to do now

Do not wait for a letter from the Federal Tax Authority. The penalties arise automatically and grow with every month, or part of a month, that passes. Three steps come first:

1. File the return now. Through EmaraTax, based on your finished financial statements. Filing ends the late filing penalty.
2. Pay the tax due. The late payment penalty runs separately until the outstanding amount is settled.
3. Check your registration. If you never registered, the late registration penalty comes on top, see below.

Failure	Penalty under Cabinet Decision No. 75 of 2023
Late return, months 1 to 12	AED 500 per month or part of a month
Late return, from month 13	AED 1,000 per month or part of a month
Unpaid tax	monthly penalty based on 14 percent per annum on the unpaid amount, per month or part of a month
Late registration	AED 10,000

The late filing penalty starts on the day after the deadline and falls due again on the same date each month. With a 30 September 2026 deadline, the first AED 500 arose on 1 October 2026 and the next follows on 1 November. The corporate tax penalty calculator shows what has accrued so far.

Small Business Relief and exemptions do not remove the filing duty. A company using Small Business Relief had to file by 30 September 2026, because the relief is elected in the return itself. Exempt persons that were required to register submit an annual declaration within the same nine months, and Cabinet Decision No. 75 of 2023 applies the same monthly amounts to a late declaration. The Federal Tax Authority named both groups explicitly in its announcement of 26 September 2026.

The AED 10,000 registration penalty can still be waived in one case. The Federal Tax Authority waives or refunds it if the first return, or for exempt persons the annual declaration, is filed within seven months of the end of the first tax period. For a first tax period ending 31 December 2025, that window closed on 31 July 2026. For a first tax period ending 31 March 2026, filing by 31 October 2026 still qualifies.

We file overdue returns at short notice, see our corporate tax services.

The nine month rule, explained properly

Your corporate tax return, and the tax payment itself, are both due within nine months of the end of your financial year. Not nine months from 1 June 2023, not nine months from your registration date, from your financial year end.

Financial year end	Filing and payment deadline
31 December	30 September (following year)
31 March	31 December (same year)
30 June	31 March (following year)

Most UAE companies run a calendar financial year, which is why 30 September is the date most people mention. If yours is different, your deadline is different too, and no one is going to remind you individually.

Two details that trip people up:

Filing and payment share one deadline. There is no grace period between submitting the return and settling what you owe. Both happen by the same date. Treating the filing deadline as the finish line, and the payment as something you will sort out afterwards, is exactly how a late payment penalty gets added on top of a return you filed perfectly on time.

The first tax period can be an odd length. A company incorporated partway through a year often has a first financial year longer than twelve months, sometimes stretching to 17 or 18 months to align with a following calendar year end. The nine month countdown still starts from wherever that first period actually ends, which is worth checking carefully rather than assuming.

If you have not registered yet, that is the more urgent deadline and it works on completely different logic. See corporate tax registration in the UAE.

Late registration versus late filing versus late payment

These are three different penalties for three different failures, and the site already covers the first one elsewhere, so here is the short version plus the two that matter for this article.

• Late registration with the Federal Tax Authority: a fixed AED 10,000 penalty, unrelated to whether you filed anything or owed any tax. This is the one most people have heard of.
• Late filing: a penalty that accrues for every month, or part of a month, that the return remains unsubmitted after the nine month deadline. It is AED 500 per month for the first twelve months and AED 1,000 per month from the thirteenth month. A delay of even one day into a new month counts as a full month, so there is no benefit in being “only a little late.”
• Late payment: assessed separately from late filing, on the tax amount that remains unpaid past the deadline. It works as an ongoing charge on the outstanding balance rather than a single fixed fee: a monthly penalty based on 14 percent per annum, for each month or part of a month. The longer the tax sits unpaid, the more it costs. All three amounts come from Cabinet Decision No. 75 of 2023 and its amendments. The separate VAT penalty regime under Cabinet Decision No. 129 of 2025 does not change them.

The practical takeaway is that late filing and late payment are not the same bill, and a company that files late but has no tax due still faces the filing penalty, month by month, even with a zero balance owed.

Registration itself is a separate exercise with its own thirty day clock, covered under corporate tax services.

If a deadline has already passed, the corporate tax penalty calculator works out what has accrued so far, and whether the AED 10,000 registration penalty can still be waived.

Why your financial year end decides more than you think

Choosing, or inheriting, a financial year end is not a paperwork afterthought, it sets your entire compliance calendar. A few consequences worth thinking through:

• It fixes your filing deadline for every future year, not just this one. Nine months out from whatever date you settle on, every single year.
• It can be changed, but under conditions set by the Federal Tax Authority, and a change affects the length of the tax period around it, sometimes creating a short or long transitional period. This is not something to decide the week before a deadline.
• Group companies and companies with foreign parents sometimes want their UAE financial year to align with a parent company’s reporting calendar. That is a legitimate reason to choose a non-calendar year end, but it needs to be set up correctly from the start, and coordinated with your bookkeeping so the numbers are ready well before the deadline, not scrambled together in month eight.

A practical filing timeline

Rather than waiting until month eight to think about the return, a cleaner approach looks like this:

1. Month 1 to 2 after year end: close the books, reconcile the final quarter, confirm there are no outstanding invoices or adjustments hanging.
2. Month 3 to 5: prepare the IFRS financial statements, and the audited statement if your company needs one, for example as a condition of Free Zone 0% status.
3. Month 6 to 7: prepare the tax computation, apply any elections such as Small Business Relief where relevant, and review with your adviser.
4. Month 8: file the return and settle the payment, with a buffer before the actual deadline in month nine. A buffer month exists precisely so a bank transfer delay or a last minute question does not turn into a late payment penalty.

Waiting until the ninth month to start is how companies with perfectly fine businesses end up with an avoidable penalty, not because they could not pay, but because they ran out of runway to prepare properly.

All UAE filing dates in one place, including VAT and corporate tax, are listed in our UAE tax deadline overview.

When is your return actually due?

The nine month rule is straightforward on paper. What catches people out is treating it as one deadline instead of two obligations that share a date, assuming a non-calendar year end works like everyone else’s, and confusing the AED 10,000 late registration penalty with the separate, ongoing cost of late filing and late payment. Clean bookkeeping throughout the year is what makes the nine month window comfortable instead of a scramble. If you missed 30 September 2026, file and pay now, because every month or part of a month adds to the bill.

We handle the full UAE side for you: bookkeeping to IFRS, FTA registration, corporate tax filing and VAT, at fixed prices.

Talk to us, the initial consultation is free.

As of 1 October 2026. This article is general information and is no substitute for advice in an individual case.

Read on: Corporate tax in Dubai · Qualifying Free Zone Person · Small Business Relief UAE · UAE corporate tax groups

The amount is the other half of the question. The corporate tax calculator works out the liability from your taxable profit.