Ministerial Decision No. 197 of 2026 eases three e-invoicing rules

On 19 October 2026 the Ministry of Finance announced Ministerial Decision No. 197 of 2026, which amends Ministerial Decision No. 243 of 2025 on the Electronic Invoicing System. The Ministry says the decision took effect on 1 October 2026 and is aimed at reducing operational burdens on businesses.

There are three changes.

• Transactions between members of the same tax group are temporarily excluded from the system for 24 months from 1 January 2027. During that period they are treated as excluded transactions.
• Article 11 now requires businesses to keep e-invoices, e-credit notes and the related data for the period set by the Tax Procedures Law, and to provide them to the Federal Tax Authority on request. The earlier requirement to store that data inside the UAE has been removed.
• Article 12 has been repealed, so businesses no longer have to notify the Federal Tax Authority of a system failure within two business days.

The tax group exclusion covers dealings between group members only. As reported by The National, at least one adviser has said it is not yet clear whether invoices a group member issues to customers outside the group are affected. The Ministry's own wording refers only to transactions between persons in the same tax group.

None of the published e-invoicing dates change with this decision. Businesses with revenue of AED 50 million or more still go live on 1 January 2027.

For a UAE business, the practical effect is less paperwork around storage location and outages, and a two-year reprieve for intra-group invoices, while every other invoice flow stays on the original timetable.