Deadline day for large businesses: what happens next and what it can cost

Today is the deadline for businesses with annual revenue of AED 50 million or more to appoint an accredited e-invoicing service provider. Those businesses must then be live on 1 January 2027.

Smaller businesses have until 31 March 2027 to appoint a provider and must start issuing e-invoices on 1 July 2027. Government entities share the March appointment date, with implementation from 1 October 2027.

In comments reported by Gulf News in late September, the Federal Tax Authority's Director General, Abdulaziz Mohammed Al Mulla, set out the penalties:

• AED 5,000 for each month, or part of a month, of delay in appointing a provider.
• AED 100 for each e-invoice not issued and transmitted on time, capped at AED 5,000 a month.
• AED 1,000 for failing to tell the authority about a system failure, for either the issuer or the recipient.

The same report quotes him saying that free zone businesses are also required to register and that no one is exempt from penalties. Note that the report is dated 29 September 2026, before Ministerial Decision No. 197 of 2026 took effect on 1 October, so check the official text for any change to these figures.

Onboarding is done through the EmaraTax platform. Officials have urged companies to check any provider against the Ministry of Finance's accredited list before signing.

If your business is in the AED 50 million group and has not yet appointed a provider, do it now rather than waiting for the next working day, because the penalty runs by the month. If you are in the later group, nothing forces you to wait until March: the same officials said smaller firms can appoint today if they are ready.

For a UAE business, the practical step is simple: confirm your provider is appointed in EmaraTax, then use the weeks before go-live to test your invoicing system and tidy your customer and tax registration data.