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
The biog
Birthday: February 22, 1956
Born: Madahha near Chittagong, Bangladesh
Arrived in UAE: 1978
Exercise: At least one hour a day on the Corniche, from 5.30-6am and 7pm to 8pm.
Favourite place in Abu Dhabi? “Everywhere. Wherever you go, you can relax.”
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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