Audited Financial Statements for UAE Corporate Tax (2026): Who Needs Them

1. Revenue above AED 50 million. Any taxable person that is not part of a tax group, with annual revenue exceeding AED 50 million, must maintain audited financial statements. For a non-resident person, only revenue derived through a permanent establishment or nexus in the UAE counts toward this threshold.

2. Qualifying Free Zone Persons — at any revenue. This is the requirement that catches small free zone companies. A free zone entity claiming the 0% rate on qualifying income must have audited financial statements no matter how small it is. A company with AED 400,000 of revenue in a free zone needs an audit; a mainland company with AED 40 million does not. Fail this condition and QFZP status is lost, taking the 0% rate with it for that period and the four that follow Read the QFZP conditions →.

3. All tax groups — this changed in 2025. Under Ministerial Decision No. 84 of 2025, every tax group must prepare and maintain audited special purpose aggregated financial statements, regardless of the group's revenue. Previously, under Ministerial Decision No. 82 of 2023, this applied only where consolidated revenue exceeded AED 50 million. Individual members within a tax group are not separately required to produce audited standalone statements.

FTA Decision No. 7 of 2025 sets out the requirements: the aggregated statements must be audited under a special purpose framework in accordance with International Standards on Auditing, and submitted to the FTA no later than 9 months from the end of the relevant tax period — the same deadline as the return itself.

Ministerial Decision No. 84 of 2025 was issued in March 2025 and applies to tax periods commencing on or after 1 January 2025. Ministerial Decision No. 82 of 2023 continues to apply to tax periods that started before that date. If you are filing for a financial year that ran through 2024, the older rules govern; for the year beginning 1 January 2025, the new ones do.

The practical effect for most businesses is unchanged. The group that must act is tax groups UAE tax groups →, which now face an audit requirement they may not have had before.

Financial statements are prepared under IFRS, per Ministerial Decision No. 114 of 2023. Businesses with revenue at or below AED 3 million may use the cash basis of accounting — but that is a question about how accounts are prepared, not about whether an audit is required. A small QFZP on any basis still needs the audit.

Most UAE businesses do not. A mainland company below AED 50 million that is not in a tax group can file corporate tax on unaudited financial statements prepared to the required standard. That said, clean, reconciled accounts remain your protection if the FTA requests records — which it can do at any point within the 7-year retention period See compliance obligations →.

An audit is not a document you order the week before filing. For a 31 December year end with a 30 September filing deadline, the practical sequence is: close the books in the first quarter, engage the auditor, complete fieldwork and receive the signed report by mid-year, then prepare and file the return. Free zone companies discovering in August that they need an audit are the most common cause of missed QFZP status — and losing it costs the 0% rate for five tax periods, not one.

If you are a QFZP without an audit arranged, this is the single item to resolve before anything else in your filing. The requirement is absolute and there is no small-company exemption from it. We can connect you with a partner audit firm Speak to advisory →.