UAE Corporate Tax Calculator
Taxable income to tax payable, with Small Business Relief tested automatically.
VAT Calculator — Add or Remove VAT
The VAT calculator works both directions — add VAT to a net amount or strip it out of a gross one. Set any rate, so it works outside the UAE too.
Any VAT rateAdd or removeReverse charge includedFree, no sign-up
Adding and removing VAT
These are different sums and mixing them up is the single most common VAT error we see in bookkeeping.
Adding VAT to a net amount
VAT = Net × rate. At the UAE rate of 5%, AED 10,000 net attracts AED 500 of VAT, giving AED 10,500 gross.
Removing VAT from a gross amount
Net = Gross ÷ (1 + rate). AED 10,500 gross at 5% divides by 1.05 to give AED 10,000 net, with AED 500 of VAT.
Note what you cannot do: take 5% of the gross figure. Five per cent of AED 10,500 is AED 525, which is wrong by AED 25. The error is small on one invoice and material across a year of them, and it is exactly the kind of drift that surfaces when someone reconciles VAT returns to accounting revenue.
The reverse charge, explained properly
Set the reverse charge to "yes" and the calculator shows output VAT, input VAT and a net cash effect of nil. That combination confuses people, so it is worth being explicit.
When you buy a service from outside the UAE, the overseas supplier does not charge UAE VAT — they have no reason to. Instead you account for the VAT yourself: you declare it as output tax as though you had made the supply, and simultaneously claim it as input tax. Where your input recovery is unrestricted, the two cancel and no cash moves.
Which leads to the mistake: because no money changes hands, the entry gets skipped entirely. It is still a declaration obligation, and omitting it is one of the errors we most often correct through voluntary disclosure. It also matters where your input recovery is restricted — then part of that VAT is a genuine cost rather than a wash.
Reconciling VAT to your accounts
Once a year, agree the turnover across your VAT returns to the revenue in your financial statements. They will not match exactly, and there are good reasons for that — out-of-scope supplies, exempt supplies, timing differences, reverse charge amounts that are not your revenue, and VAT quarters that straddle your year end.
The point is not that they match. It is that you can explain the difference on one page. The FTA holds both filings and comparing them is automatic, so an unexplained gap is a query waiting to happen — see the reconciliation guide.
Before you rely on the VAT calculator result
The arithmetic here is exact and has been checked against worked examples. What a calculator cannot do is know your situation — your contract, your licence category, the elections available to you, or the exceptions that might apply. It applies a formula to the figures you give it.
Use it to get a sense of scale, to sanity-check something you have been quoted, or to work a problem through for yourself. Where the number is going into a decision that matters, have the assumptions underneath it checked. That conversation is free and it usually takes twenty minutes.
UAE Tax & Compliance
VAT — common questions
The questions we are asked most about this calculation.
Something not covered? Ask us directly — there is no charge for a straight answer.
The standard rate is 5%, applied to most goods and services. Certain supplies are zero-rated, including qualifying exports and some healthcare and education, and certain supplies are exempt, including some financial services, residential property and local passenger transport. Zero-rated and exempt are not the same thing — zero-rated supplies allow input recovery and exempt supplies generally do not.
Divide by 1 plus the rate. At 5%, divide the gross figure by 1.05. Do not take 5% of the gross figure — that overstates the VAT. On AED 10,500 the correct VAT is AED 500, not AED 525.
Registration is mandatory once taxable supplies exceed the mandatory threshold, measured on a rolling basis rather than at year end — which is why it can be crossed mid-quarter without anyone noticing. Voluntary registration is available at a lower threshold, and is often worth taking where you incur recoverable input VAT before you start invoicing.
For services and certain goods imported into the UAE, you account for the VAT yourself rather than the overseas supplier charging it. You declare it as output tax and claim it as input tax on the same return, so where recovery is unrestricted the cash effect is nil. It is still a declaration obligation and skipping it is a common error.
Yes. The rate field is editable, so set it to your own VAT or GST rate — 20% for the UK, 5% for Saudi Arabia, 18% for India — and the arithmetic works identically. The reverse charge logic applies in similar form in many jurisdictions, though the specific rules differ.
Want the assumptions checked by a chartered accountant?
Send us what the calculator gave you and we will tell you whether the figures underneath it hold up. Free, and genuinely no obligation.