Your VAT Return File Must Be Ready Before 28 September

• 28 August, 2026
• By Safwan, Managing Partner
• Tax Compliance

Last reviewed 28 August 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 late return starts with a late file

The return is filed in EmaraTax, but the work starts in your accounts. For a tax period ending on 31 August, the normal deadline is 28 September. The risk is not only missing the date. A rushed file can put sales in the wrong Emirate, claim input tax without an invoice trail or bury an old error inside a new return. Send your accountant a reconciled pack while there is still time to ask what a number means. If you would rather not handle this in house, this is what our vat return filing support covers.

Your accountant should not have to build a VAT return from a bank statement and a WhatsApp export. Under Federal Decree-Law No. 8 of 2017 on Value Added Tax, a return is due no later than the 28th day following the end of the relevant tax period. The Federal Tax Authority repeats the same rule in its filing guidance. If your period ends on 31 August, that puts the ordinary filing and payment date at 28 September 2026. Check the due date shown in your EmaraTax account as well.

The 28 September deadline starts with your tax period

Do not start with the calendar. Start with the tax period on your VAT registration certificate and the required actions in EmaraTax. A monthly filer with an August period has a different close from a business on a longer assigned period. The FTA says filing and payment happen by the 28th day after the period ends, unless the Authority has set another date or the due date is affected by a non-working day or public holiday.

Send a clean sales file, not a bank statement

Output tax begins with supplies, not cash receipts. Send the sales ledger for the full tax period, the issued tax invoices, credit notes, cancelled invoices and any sales posted after the period close. The pack should separate standard-rated, zero-rated and exempt supplies. A bank statement can show money arriving, but it cannot show why a receipt was outside the scope of the return or why a credit note reduced output tax.

Keep the source records together after filing. The FTA’s tax record-keeping guide explains the audit trail from an invoice to the final return. That trail is what lets someone revisit a figure after the person who posted it has forgotten the transaction.

Input tax needs an invoice trail

The purchase file deserves the same care. Send the purchase register, supplier tax invoices, credit notes received, import records and a list of costs for which input tax was not claimed. Mark invoices that relate to mixed business and private use for review. Do not let the accounting system claim every VAT-coded expense automatically. Your accountant still has to test whether the input tax belongs in the return and whether the supporting document is present.

The FTA’s taxable-person guidance says a VAT record includes supplies and imports, tax invoices and credit notes received and issued, records of non-deducted purchases, exports and adjustments or corrections. The same guide says records are generally kept for at least 5 years after the end of the relevant tax period, with a possible further period of up to 4 years in specified cases such as a dispute.

Reconcile every return box to the ledger

A return should be explainable line by line. The VAT Law sets out the minimum information a return must contain, including taxable supplies and output tax, zero-rated and exempt supplies, reverse-charge supplies, expenses for which input tax is claimed, and the resulting payable or refundable amount. The FTA VAT Returns User Guide then maps those figures to the boxes in the online return.

Check the Emirate split before you send it

Do not give your accountant one UAE-wide sales total and expect the return to sort itself out. The FTA guide says standard-rated supplies should be identified by the Emirate in which the supply was made, where applicable. Reconcile the sales report to the fixed establishments and the Emirate fields used in your VAT records.

A total that agrees nationally can still be allocated incorrectly.

Treat the adjustment column as a narrow lane. The FTA guide says it is used for output-tax adjustments from VAT bad-debt relief and certain taxable commercial-property sales. It says not to place anything there when neither adjustment applies. If bad debt is part of your close, use the VAT bad-debt relief guide to prepare the supporting file before the return is reviewed.

Put corrections in the right lane

Before the return is approved, compare the current ledger with prior VAT returns. List every difference by period, line and VAT amount. The FTA VAT Returns User Guide says an error that made payable tax less than required by AED 10,000 or less can be corrected in the current return. If the error made payable tax less than required by more than AED 10,000, the guide says to make a Voluntary Disclosure instead.

1. List prior-period differences separately from current-period transactions.
2. Calculate the VAT difference, not just the gross sales or expense difference.
3. Route an error at or below AED 10,000 to the current-return correction process only after the guide’s conditions are met.
4. Escalate an error above AED 10,000 for a Voluntary Disclosure before choosing the easier-looking box.

Example: an August return leaves AED 12,600 payable

Example. A Dubai marketing company closes its tax period on 31 August 2026. It recorded AED 300,000 of standard-rated sales, AED 40,000 of zero-rated supplies and AED 20,000 of exempt income. The standard-rated sales produce AED 15,000 of output VAT at the UAE’s 5% rate. The purchase file contains AED 2,400 of recoverable input tax. The arithmetic is AED 15,000 minus AED 2,400, leaving AED 12,600 payable. Subject to the date shown in EmaraTax, the return and payment should be ready by 28 September 2026.

The zero-rated and exempt amounts still belong in the return analysis, even though they do not add to the AED 12,600 net payment in this example. If the purchase file cannot support the AED 2,400 claim, the result changes.

That is why the handoff pack matters as much as the final calculation.

The mistake we see most is filing before close

The mistake we see most is sending the return as soon as the software produces a number. The owner wants the task gone, so the accountant works from an unclosed ledger. A late credit note is missed, an import is posted in the wrong period and the bank balance is used as a shortcut for sales. The submitted figure may look reasonable. It is not supported.

Set a cut-off for documents before the return is prepared. Then keep a short exception list for items that arrived after the cut-off. A clean exception list gives the reviewer something to resolve. A clean-looking return with no working papers gives them nothing.

Old penalty pages are now dangerous

The current schedule is not the one repeated in many older online checklists. The FTA’s legislation page lists Cabinet Decision No. 40 of 2017 and its amendments. The FTA announced that the changes under Cabinet Decision No. 129 of 2025 took effect on 14 April 2026. For a return due after that date, check the current schedule before estimating exposure.

The late-return charge and the late-payment charge are separate risks. Filing the form without paying the amount due does not close the payment exposure. Equally, paying an amount does not repair a return that reports the wrong supplies or input tax.

One question is still unsettled

One point remains unsettled in the public guidance. The FTA VAT Returns User Guide draws a line at AED 10,000 for correcting an error in a current return versus making a Voluntary Disclosure, but it does not explain how to aggregate several separate errors found together when each is below the line and their combined effect is above it. Do not choose the easier route by instinct. Document the error-by-error analysis and escalate the combined position for advice.

What to do today before 28 September

Make the handoff boring. That is a good result.

1. Confirm the tax period and the due date shown in EmaraTax.
2. Export the sales, purchase, import, credit-note and adjustment files.
3. Reconcile the ledgers to the return boxes and list every open exception.
4. Approve the return and arrange payment before the deadline, not on the deadline.

If the file is not ready, send it to Exiloz’s VAT return filing service with the open items marked. A reviewer can resolve a visible gap. They cannot resolve a gap that was never listed.

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