GCC Tax Flash News – August 2025

United Arab Emirates (UAE)

• The Federal Tax Authority (‘FTA’) issued the Tax User manual on following aspects
  • Corporate Tax payments
  • Corporate Tax De-registration
  • Change of Corporate Tax period
• The FTA issued a Decision No. 7 of 2025 and Public Clarification CTP007 on Determination of the Requirements for Preparing and Maintaining Audited Special Purpose Financial Statements for a Tax Group
• The Abu Dhabi Global Market (‘the ADGM’) issued a guide on the financial statements for the ADGM entities that are ‘qualifying free zone persons’ under UAE Corporate Tax Law

• Mandatory confirmation of contact details is asked on the Emara Tax portal for the taxpayers and failure to do so within the timeline may attract penalty

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA)

• The General Secretariat of Zakat, Tax and Customs Committees updated the web portal (gstc.gov.sa) for better user experience and transparency. This portal allows open access to lots of important information including compendium of decisions on various Tax cases (both in Arabic and English) and published ZAKAT and Tax principles

Kingdom of Bahrain

• The National Bureau for Revenue (‘the NBR’) released an updated Import and Exports VAT guide

• The NBR released an updated guide on Entities in scope of DMTT
• The NBR released DMTT Advance Payment manual. The deadline for first advance payment for the constituent entities of a MNE Group having 31 December year end was 31 August 2025

State of Qatar

• The General Tax Authority of Qatar (‘the GTA’) urged Companies to submit their CT return accompanied by audited financial statement from a licensed auditor in the State of Qatar, if any of the following conditions are met:
  1. Capital is greater than QAR 200,000
  2. Total income is greater than QAR 500,000
  3. Company’s head office is located outside Qatar

• The GTA issued FAQs on the 100% Financial Penalty Exemption initiative which is available for the tax payers till 31 December 2025, provided certain conditions are met.

State of Oman

• The Oman Tax Authority (‘the OTA’) issued the criteria for selecting the first 100 companies to launch first phase of E-invoicing system in Oman which is expected from July 2026. The selection will be based on various factors like business size and number of transactions, tax compliance and cooperation with the OTA, willingness to support the experimental phase, etc.

• The OTA announced the postponement of implementation of phase three of the Digital Stamp System and the new deadline is 01 November 2025

Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD)

• The OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on BEPS announced an update to its Central Record of Legislation which confirms the addition of several jurisdictions granted for the transitional qualified status under Pillar Two and UAE is the first GCC country to be granted this status