How to File Corporate Tax in the UAE on EmaraTax in 2026: Step-by-Step Guide With Screenshots

How to File Corporate Tax in UAE on EmaraTax in 2026

• Open a browser and go to eservices.tax.gov.ae.
• Log in with UAE PASS, or with the email address and password you used when you registered for corporate tax.
• You land on the Taxable Person List. Click View under your company’s name. That opens the company dashboard.
• In the menu strip down the left side of the screen you will see HOME, VAT, EXCISE TAX, CORPORATE TAX, MY PAYMENTS and a few more. Click CORPORATE TAX. A page of tiles appears. The first one is Corporate Tax Filings. Click the dark View All button inside that tile.
• Now you are looking at a table with one row for each tax period. Read across the row: Period From, Period To, Due Date, Status. On the far right of the row, under the column headed Action, there is a small link that says File. Click it. The return opens.

[For detailed guide with screenshots, scroll down…]

The return itself is eight numbered sections. A bar across the top shows all eight and highlights the one you are on. You move forward with the Next Step button at the bottom right and backwards with Previous Step at the bottom left. Save as Draft sits between them, and it is worth pressing often. Finish the eighth section, tick the declaration, press Submit, and the status of that row changes to Submitted.

That is the whole journey. The rest of this guide is the detail: what to have ready first, what each of the eight sections actually asks you, and how to pay once the return is in.

One thing before you start. The return asks for numbers you cannot invent on the spot — your revenue, your net accounting profit, your fixed assets, sometimes an auditor’s name. If you open the form without those figures in front of you, you will get four screens in and stop. So get the paperwork together first. The next section is the list.

What to keep ready before you file corporate tax in the UAE on EmaraTax?

Gather these before you open the return. EmaraTax lets you save a draft, but a half-filled return that sits open for three weeks is how deadlines get missed.

Which accounting standard applies to you

Ministerial Decision No. 114 of 2023 sets this, and it turns entirely on your revenue.

Do you need audited accounts?

Two groups must have audited financial statements, under Ministerial Decision No. 84 of 2025:

• any Taxable Person that is not a Tax Group with revenue above AED 50,000,000 in the tax period;
• every Qualifying Free Zone Person, whatever its revenue — a free zone company claiming the 0% rate needs an audit even if it earned very little;
• a Tax Group must prepare audited special purpose financial statements.

If you fall into either group, EmaraTax pre-fills the audit question in the return as Yes and you cannot change it. The auditor must be licensed in the UAE.

Transfer pricing files — only if you are large

You must prepare a Local File and a Master File only if either of these is true, under Ministerial Decision No. 97 of 2023:

• your own revenue in the tax period is AED 200,000,000 or more; or
• you are part of a multinational group with total consolidated revenue of AED 3,150,000,000 or more.

You do not upload these with the return. You keep them and hand them over within 30 days if the FTA asks — that deadline comes from Article 55 of the Corporate Tax Law, while the two thresholds come from the Ministerial Decision.

Step by step: filing your corporate tax return on EmaraTax

Fifteen steps. The first five get you to the form. Steps six to fourteen are the form itself. Step fifteen is paying.

Step 1 — Log in to EmaraTax

Go to eservices.tax.gov.ae. The welcome screen offers a black Sign in with UAE PASS button in the middle of a bordered card. UAE PASS is the fastest route: you tap approve on your phone and you are in.

If your account was created with an email address instead, look at the bottom of the same card for the line “Non UAE PASS users may Login here” and click the underlined Login here. The card swaps to three fields: E-mail Address, Password and a security code you copy from the image beside it. Then press the gold Login button.

Step 2 — Open your company’s Taxable Person profile

After login you land on the Taxable Person List. Each company you are linked to shows as a card with its name and a dark View button along the bottom of the card. Click View on the company you are filing for.

If you handle more than one company, check the name twice. Filing a return under the wrong Taxable Person means a voluntary disclosure later.

Step 3 — Click CORPORATE TAX in the left menu

The company dashboard opens. Down the left-hand side is the main menu: HOME, then your tax types — VAT, EXCISE TAX, CORPORATE TAX — then MY PAYMENTS, MY CORRESPONDENCE, USER AUTHORIZATION, MY AUDIT, MY REPORTS and OTHER SERVICES.

Click CORPORATE TAX. It turns gold to show it is selected.

Step 4 — Open Corporate Tax Filings

The Corporate Tax page is a grid of tiles grouped under headings. The first group is Corporate Tax Returns & Refunds, and the first tile in it is Corporate Tax Filings. Under the tile name you will see a small gold line such as 1 Not filed — that is your unfiled return waiting.

Click the dark blue View All bar at the bottom of the Corporate Tax Filings tile. Not the Corporate Tax Refund tile beside it, and not the Elections tile below it.

Step 5 — Find your tax period and click File

A table called Corporate Tax Filings opens, one row per tax period. Reading across: Type, Application Number, Period Description, Period From, Period To, Due Date, Submission Date, Net Corporate Tax Position, Status, and last of all Action.

Check the Period From and Period To dates match the year you mean to file. The Due Date shows in green. On the far right of that row, in the Action column, is a small link with a document icon that reads File. Click it.

Step 6 — Understand the eight sections before you type anything

The return opens on a screen with a numbered bar across the top. Those eight circles are the whole return:

Two things make this easier than it looks. First, EmaraTax only shows you the fields and schedules that can apply to you — a small mainland trading company never sees the free zone questions. Second, the buttons never move: Previous Step at the bottom left, and Cancel, Save as Draft and Next Step at the bottom right.

Amounts are entered in UAE dirhams, rounded to the nearest dirham. Fields with a grey background are filled by EmaraTax from your registration and cannot be typed over.

Step 7 — Section 1: Taxpayer Details

This section is a check, not a typing exercise. EmaraTax fills in your TRN, the company name in English and Arabic, the entity type and sub-type, and the address. A grey strip near the top called Filing Period shows three things worth reading carefully: Corporate Tax Return Period, Corporate Tax Return Due Date, and Corporate Tax Year End.

Read those three. If the period is wrong, stop. You cannot fix it inside the return — it has to be corrected in your registration details first. If everything is right, press Next Step.

Step 8 — Section 2: Elections (this is where Small Business Relief lives)

An election is a choice you make once in the return that changes how your income is taxed. There are six, and EmaraTax shows you only the ones you are eligible for.

The Federal Tax Authority is blunt about the effect: once an election is made in the return, it applies — there is no confirmation step and no approval letter afterwards. Get it right here.

Two costs come with it, and neither is obvious. A tax loss made in a year you claim Small Business Relief cannot be carried forward to a later year, and neither can disallowed net interest. If you made a real loss, work out whether carrying it forward is worth more than the relief before you tick the box.

The relief was originally due to end with tax periods ending on 31 December 2026. Ministerial Decision No. 131 of 2026, issued on 29 July 2026, extended it to tax periods ending on or before 31 December 2029. A lot of pages online still show the old date.

Step 9 — Section 3: Accounting Schedules

This is where your financial statements go in. It is the longest section and the one that needs the trial balance beside you. It has four parts: the income statement, the statement of other comprehensive income, the statement of financial position, and an audit question.

The FTA describes this whole section as being for disclosure purposes only — the numbers here do not by themselves calculate your tax. They are the picture of the business the FTA wants on record. Enter them standalone, not consolidated, unless you are a Tax Group.

If you use the cash basis because your revenue is AED 3,000,000 or less, you complete only the income statement part.

The audit question asks whether your financial statements were audited. If your revenue is above AED 50,000,000, or you are a Qualifying Free Zone Person, EmaraTax has already answered Yes for you and you must give the auditor’s name.

Step 10 — Section 4: Accounting Adjustments and Exempt Income

Accounting profit and taxable income are not the same number. This section is where you bridge the two.

You take out income that is exempt — dividends from UAE companies, qualifying participation income from shareholdings that meet the rules, and profits of a foreign branch if you elected the exemption. You add back costs the law does not allow, such as fines and penalties, bribes, donations to bodies that are not approved, and the disallowed half of entertainment costs.

Each exemption you claim opens its own schedule further down the return — a UAE Dividends schedule, a Participation Exemption schedule, a Foreign Permanent Establishment schedule. Fill in the schedule, not just the summary line.

Step 11 — Section 5: Reliefs

Reliefs are the group-level and restructuring claims: transfers within a Qualifying Group, Business Restructuring Relief, and the tax loss position. If you elected any of them in Section 2, this is where the numbers go.

Tax losses are handled here too. A loss carried forward can cover no more than 75% of the taxable income of the year you use it in, so a loss rarely wipes out a profitable year in one go.

Step 12 — Section 6: Other Adjustments

Interest, transfer pricing and unrealised gains sit here.

The interest capping rules limit how much net interest expense you can deduct. The related party rules require your dealings with connected businesses and people to be priced as if they were strangers — the arm’s length principle. Whether you have to disclose those dealings depends on three thresholds:

Dividends declared between related parties do not have to be disclosed and do not count towards the AED 40 million or AED 4 million tests.

Step 13 — Section 7: Tax Liability and Tax Credits

You do not calculate the tax. EmaraTax does it from everything you entered: 0% on the first AED 375,000 of taxable income and 9% on the rest. A Qualifying Free Zone Person sees 0% on Qualifying Income and 9% on the rest.

Here is what that means in money. The 0% band is a slice, not a cliff — it applies to every company, so nobody pays 9% on their first AED 375,000.

Below the calculation you can enter tax credits: withholding tax credits, and foreign tax credit for tax already paid abroad on income that is also taxed here. Claiming a foreign tax credit opens the Tax Credit schedule.

If any figure you have used is an estimate rather than a final number, the return requires you to say so. Do not skip that.

Step 14 — Section 8: Review and Declaration, then Submit

The last screen replays the return for you to check, then asks four things: the date, who prepared the return (yourself, a Tax Agent or a Legal Representative), a confirmation that you have the authority to file, and a confirmation that the information is accurate and complete. You sign by typing your name and your capacity.

This is a legal declaration, not a formality. Corporate tax in the UAE is a self-assessment system: the FTA does not check your figures before accepting the return. It accepts what you say, and can audit it later.

Press Submit. Three things then happen: the row in Corporate Tax Filings changes status to Submitted, you get a submission acknowledgment, and you get a tax liability notification telling you what to pay. Download and keep both.

Step 15 — Pay the corporate tax

Go to MY PAYMENTS in the left menu. EmaraTax shows what is due, then a screen headed Select a Payment Method with a payment summary on the left and two choices on the right: GIBAN and Card Payment.

Money that arrives is applied to the oldest liability first. If you overpay, the credit sits on your account and is used against the next liability that falls due.

When your return is due

One rule covers everyone: nine months from the end of your tax period. Your tax period is your financial year. Both the return and the payment are due on that same day.

What it costs if you are late

The penalties are set by Cabinet Decision No. 75 of 2023, as amended. They are automatic. Nobody has to decide to charge you.

The late registration penalty can still be waived

If you were fined AED 10,000 for registering late, the Federal Tax Authority runs a waiver. The condition is simple: file your first tax return or annual declaration within seven months of the end of your first tax period, instead of the usual nine. Do that and the AED 10,000 is waived. If you already paid it, it goes back as a credit on your EmaraTax account.

The FTA has an eligibility checker on tax.gov.ae. You enter your date of establishment and your financial year, type the code from the image, and press Calculate.

Free zone companies: you file too

A common and expensive misunderstanding is that a free zone company is outside corporate tax. It is not. A free zone company registers, files and keeps records like everyone else. What it can get is a 0% rate on part of its income.

To be a Qualifying Free Zone Person and pay 0% on Qualifying Income, all of these must be true:

• you have adequate substance in the free zone — real people, real premises, real expenditure, and the core income-generating activities carried out there;
• your income is Qualifying Income as defined by Cabinet Decision No. 100 of 2023;
• you have not elected to be taxed at the normal rates;
• you meet the arm’s length and transfer pricing documentation rules;
• you have audited financial statements;
• your non-qualifying revenue stays inside the de minimis limit — the lower of 5% of total revenue or AED 5,000,000.

Break the de minimis limit or fail any other condition and you lose the 0% rate for that tax period and the next four. That is a five-year consequence from a single year’s mistake, which is why the free zone schedule in the return is worth slow, careful reading.

Who has to file, and who does not

If you are registered for corporate tax, you file. That is the short version, and it catches most people out because they assume no profit means no return.

Individuals in business

A natural person — a sole trader, a freelancer with a licence, a consultant — comes into corporate tax only if turnover from business activities in the UAE went above AED 1,000,000 in a calendar year, under Cabinet Decision No. 49 of 2023. Salary, personal investment income and personal real estate investment income do not count towards that figure and are not taxed.

If you crossed the line, your tax period is the calendar year, and your return is due by 30 September of the following year.

Tax Groups

A UAE parent and its 95%-owned subsidiaries can form a Tax Group and file one return for the whole group. The parent files it. The AED 375,000 zero-rate band applies once to the group, not once per company. Transactions inside the group are eliminated.

Exempt Persons

Government entities, government-controlled entities, qualifying public benefit entities, qualifying investment funds, extractive and non-extractive natural resource businesses, and public and private pension and social security funds are exempt. They still register, and they submit an annual declaration rather than a tax return — also within nine months.

Mistakes that cost money

What happens after you submit

The FTA does not check your return before accepting it. Corporate tax is self-assessed: you calculate, you declare, and the return is taken at face value. The checking happens later, if at all, through an audit — which is why the seven-year record rule matters.

You can amend a submitted return. If the tax effect of the error is AED 10,000 or less, correct it in your next return. Above that, file a Voluntary Disclosure in EmaraTax within 20 business days of finding the error. Disclosing costs 1% a month on the difference; being found out first costs 15% plus 1% a month.

Keep the submission acknowledgment, the tax liability notification and the payment confirmation together with the financial statements for that year. Seven years.

The Federal Tax Authority publishes the full Corporate Tax Return taxpayer user manual and the Corporate Tax Returns Guide (CTGTXR1) free on tax.gov.ae, under Taxes → Corporate Tax → Guides, References & Public Clarifications. Search “Tax Return” on that page. If a screen in this guide looks different on your account, the manual is the authority.

Frequently asked questions

The bottom line

Filing corporate tax on EmaraTax is a form, not an ordeal. A small company with clean accounts and revenue under AED 3,000,000 can be done in an afternoon: log in, View, Corporate Tax, View All, File, tick Small Business Relief in Section 2, fill in the income statement, sign Section 8, submit. Nothing to pay.

The work is in the preparation, not the portal. Have the financial statements finished on the right accounting standard, know your revenue figure to the dirham, know whether you need an audit, and have the related-party numbers to hand. Companies that miss the deadline almost never miss it because EmaraTax was confusing. They miss it because the accounts were not ready in month eight.

Count your nine months from your own year end, put the date in a calendar with a month of warning, and file before the last week — the portal is busiest, and slowest, in the final days of September.

Sources

• Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 on the Taxation of Corporations and Businesses — Articles 3, 48, 51, 53, 56 — mof.gov.ae and tax.gov.ae
• Federal Tax Authority, Corporate Tax Return — Taxpayer User Manual, issued 22 August 2025 — tax.gov.ae
• Federal Tax Authority, Corporate Tax Returns Guide (CTGTXR1), 11 November 2024 — tax.gov.ae
• Federal Tax Authority, Corporate Tax Payments — User Manual — tax.gov.ae
• Federal Tax Authority news release, “FTA Calls on All Persons subject to Corporate Tax to File Their Tax Returns and Pay the Corporate Tax Due Within the Specified Timeframes”, 2 September 2026 — tax.gov.ae
• Cabinet Decision No. 75 of 2023 on administrative penalties, as amended — tax.gov.ae
• Cabinet Decision No. 100 of 2023 on Qualifying Income for Qualifying Free Zone Persons; Ministerial Decision No. 229 of 2025 on qualifying and excluded activities, 3 September 2025 — mof.gov.ae
• Cabinet Decision No. 49 of 2023 on natural persons subject to corporate tax — mof.gov.ae
• Ministerial Decision No. 73 of 2023 on Small Business Relief; Ministerial Decision No. 131 of 2026 extending it to 31 December 2029, issued 29 July 2026 — mof.gov.ae
• Ministerial Decision No. 114 of 2023 on accounting standards and methods — mof.gov.ae
• Ministerial Decision No. 84 of 2025 on the requirement to maintain audited financial statements — mof.gov.ae
• Ministerial Decision No. 97 of 2023 on transfer pricing documentation thresholds — mof.gov.ae
• Federal Tax Authority Decision No. 4 of 2026 on record keeping requirements, effective 30 July 2026 — tax.gov.ae
• Federal Tax Authority public clarification CTP011 on downward transfer pricing adjustments, 15 July 2026 — tax.gov.ae
• The Official Portal of the UAE Government, corporate tax pages — u.ae