30 September is 15 days away, and if your UAE entity's financial year ended on 31 December 2025, that's the day your first corporate tax return is due — for filing and payment both. For a lot of Indian founders, this is the first CT return they've ever had to deal with.

We talk to founders every week who set up a Free Zone company in Dubai in 2024 or 2025, started listing on Amazon.ae or Noon, and quietly filed corporate tax under “deal with it later” or “only if we're profitable.” Neither holds. The return is due nine months after your tax period closes, so a December year-end lands on 30 September 2026 regardless of what you earned.

Filing is mandatory even when you owe nothing

Here's the part that catches people out: filing is mandatory even when you owe nothing. Taxable income under AED 375,000 is taxed at 0%. Turnover under AED 3 million can elect Small Business Relief and also pay nothing. Neither of those removes the obligation to be registered and to file a return on time. A nil bill still needs a filed return. Confirm the current thresholds directly with the FTA before relying on any third-party summary, including this one.

The penalties are fixed, not negotiable

Miss the date and the penalties are fixed, not negotiable. Late filing is AED 500 for each of the first 12 months, then AED 1,000 a month after that. Unpaid tax accrues interest at 14% a year, charged monthly. And if you never registered at all, that's a separate AED 10,000. The FTA has been actively reminding small businesses of this precisely because filing-even-at-nil is the mistake it sees most.

Three things worth doing this week

If this might be you, three things are worth doing this week.

Check your entity's actual tax period end in your incorporation papers, because a company set up mid-2024 may not have a clean calendar year.

Confirm you're registered for corporate tax on the FTA's EmaraTax portal, since registration and the return are two separate steps and a VAT registration doesn't cover it.

Reconcile your 2025 numbers now, even if the answer is zero, because both the 0% band and Small Business Relief have to be claimed inside the return, with records to back the claim.

Getting certain before 30 September

This is exactly the kind of filing we take off a brand's plate when we onboard them, alongside VAT, customs and IOR, so the founder isn't tracking FTA deadlines between marketing pushes. If you've got a UAE entity and you're not certain where you stand on 30 September, this is a good week to get certain.

And for the founders who've already been through one UAE corporate tax filing: what caught you out the first time?