What to Give Your UAE Tax Accountant in September

• 25 September, 2026
• By Safwan, Managing Partner
• Tax Compliance

Last reviewed 25 September 2026 by the Exiloz tax team against the UAE legislation in force on that date. Tax law moves — confirm any figure against tax.gov.ae before you act on it.

A clean handover starts before the deadline

September handovers fail in the gaps. Your accountant needs more than a bank export. They need the ledger behind each number, the VAT evidence behind each claim, and a note for transactions that do not fit the ordinary month. For some companies, 30 September 2026 is the Corporate Tax filing and payment date. For a September VAT period, the next filing falls 28 days after period end. Send a labelled pack early enough for questions. If you would rather not handle this in house, this is what our accounting handover support covers.

A folder of unsorted PDFs is not a handover. It is a second investigation. Start with a pack that lets the accountant trace a return line to a ledger entry, then to the invoice, contract, bank movement or other source behind it. The Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022 on Corporate and Business Tax makes the Taxable Person responsible for the return. A consultant can prepare work, but the business still needs control of its records and filing decisions.

The handover pack is a control file, not a zip folder

Create one folder for the legal entity and the exact period being reviewed. Put a short cover sheet first. It should show the legal name, trade licence number, Corporate Tax TRN, VAT TRN, financial year end, accounting basis, handover date and the person who can answer questions. Add the date of the last filed VAT return and Corporate Tax return, plus the next dates shown in EmaraTax.

Then add the history folder. Include prior returns, payment confirmations, FTA notices, open clarification requests and the chart of accounts. Do not send passwords in the same email as the files. Give the accountant the minimum access needed, record who received it and remove access when the work ends.

Put the deadline sheet on top

Begin with the filing date that controls the review. The Federal Tax Authority reminder on Corporate Tax filing says the return and payment are due within nine months from the end of the relevant Tax Period. It gives a direct example: a Taxable Person whose financial year ended on 31 December 2025 had a filing and payment deadline of 30 September 2026.

The existing UAE tax compliance calendar helps with planning. It is not a substitute for the dates shown in your EmaraTax account. A 30 September deadline belongs to a particular Tax Period, not every UAE company.

Reconcile the books before your accountant starts

Send a final trial balance and general ledger for the handover period. Then send the bank reconciliations, receivables and payables ageing, inventory count, fixed-asset schedule, loan balances, accrued expenses and deferred income. If payroll is posted through the books, include the payroll summary and any gratuity or leave accrual working.

The FTA says Corporate Tax support records include transactions, assets including purchases and disposals, liabilities and shares held at the end of the Tax Period. Explain unusual movements while you still remember them.

One clean export is worth more than four partial ones.

Give VAT its own evidence trail

VAT is not the sales total with a percentage added at the end. Give the accountant sales and purchase ledgers, tax invoices, credit notes, customs or import evidence, reverse-charge workings and a list of corrections made after the first export. The FTA VAT guidance says a registered business must file its VAT return and make the related payment within 28 days from the end of the Tax Period.

Mark a missing invoice instead of quietly removing the cost from the ledger. The question is then visible, and the accountant can decide if another document or a correction is needed. Also compare the turnover and taxable-expense summary with the FTA registration thresholds. The FTA lists AED 375,000 for mandatory registration and AED 187,500 for voluntary registration, measured against the relevant past or expected period.

VAT errors hide in the exceptions.

Corporate Tax needs the working papers behind the return

Use the Corporate Tax filing guide as a filing map, then send the actual working papers. Include the signed or final financial statements, the trial balance used to prepare them, the tax computation, fixed-asset movement, tax-loss support, foreign-tax evidence where claimed and a note on elections already made.

Add a related-party and connected-person list, even if the amounts look routine. Include the counterparty, date, amount, account used, invoice or agreement and business reason. A blank spreadsheet line is not an explanation. The accountant needs enough context to decide how the item should be classified and whether a separate disclosure is required.

The FTA says Corporate Tax records must be retained for at least seven years after the end of the relevant Tax Period. That makes the handover folder part of a longer record trail. Do not send a temporary export and then delete the source files when the review is finished.

Add the registration and e-invoicing status

The cover sheet should state whether the business is VAT registered, whether its registration position has changed and which legal entities share the accounting system. The FTA registration page uses the AED 375,000 mandatory and AED 187,500 voluntary thresholds. Give the accountant the sales summary and taxable-expense evidence used for that check, not only a yes or no answer.

If annual revenue is above AED 50 million, add an e-invoicing status line. The Ministry of Finance announcement says the first group must appoint an Accredited Service Provider by 30 October 2026 and fully implement the system by 1 January 2027. Record the provider decision, owner and next action. Exiloz is not an Accredited Service Provider.

A PDF invoice is not automatically an eInvoice. If the business has an e-invoicing project, hand over the source-system list, invoice streams, customer and supplier masters, tax mappings and unresolved exceptions. Keep this as a project note alongside the tax records.

The mistake we see most is owner spending

The mistake we see most is treating owner transactions as too small to explain. An owner-paid supplier invoice stays in a chat, a personal card pays a business cost, a loan account is never reconciled or a cash drawing is posted as an expense. These items disappear from ordinary sales and purchase exports, then return as questions during the return review.

Create one line for every such item. Record the date, counterparty, amount, business reason, account used and source document. Do the same for transfers between companies under common ownership. The accountant can then decide how the item should be classified instead of guessing from a bank narration.

A worked example catches a missing invoice

Example only. On 25 September 2026, a Dubai design studio prepares its September handover. The sales ledger contains 12 invoices at AED 14,000 each, or AED 168,000. The purchase ledger contains 8 bills at AED 5,250 each, or AED 42,000. The pack therefore contains 20 transaction documents and a gross ledger difference of AED 126,000 before payroll, owner entries and tax adjustments. If the export shows 19 documents and AED 160,000 of sales, one sales invoice or a correction is missing.

The arithmetic is not the filing. The accountant still needs the source invoices, payment trail and VAT treatment for each exception. That is the point of the example. A handover pack should expose a mismatch while the person who created the entry can still explain it.

One handover point is still unsettled

The law and FTA material set record duties, filing rules and retention periods. They do not prescribe one universal folder structure or one safe cloud-export format for every accountant handover. That operational point is unsettled. Preserve original invoices, emails, contracts, system exports and the export date where they exist. Treat a shared folder as a copy of the trail, not proof that the trail is complete.

For VAT invoices, the FTA says issued and received invoices must be retained for a minimum of five years. Records related to real property have a 15-year period under Article 71 of the VAT Executive Regulation. The UAE tax records guide is useful for the wider retention picture. This article is narrower. It is about getting the right files to the accountant while the transactions are still fresh.

Send the pack with an open-issues list

A good handover ends with a short decision log, not a larger attachment. If you need someone to turn raw exports into this pack, see our accounting services in Dubai.

1. Lock the cut-off date and name the Tax Period.
2. Reconcile the ledger, VAT schedules and bank balances.
3. Mark missing documents and owner questions in one list.
4. Send the pack, record the handover date and keep the unresolved list open until the accountant closes it.

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