Invoicing guide
Invoicing in United Arab Emirates
VAT — how it works, what an invoice needs, and where the numbers come from.
Data as of 2026-07-19. Sources: tax.gov.ae (opens in new tab), tax.gov.ae (opens in new tab), www.cleartax.com (opens in new tab).
This is general guidance, not tax advice — verify with your tax authority.
The tax regime
United Arab Emirates taxes most sales under a VAT system (regime type: vat). The document title Ochre prints is “Tax Invoice” once you're registered, or “Invoice” if you're not.
Tax registration number
The tax registration number for United Arab Emirates is labelled Tax Registration Number (TRN) on an Ochre invoice.
Format: 15 digits.
Registration & thresholds
375,000 AED — Mandatory registration above AED 375,000 taxable supplies/imports over the previous 12 months (or expected within the next 30 days). Voluntary registration from AED 187,500 (exactly half). Non-resident businesses making any taxable supply in the UAE must register regardless of threshold. Businesses must not charge VAT until the TRN is actually issued.
Rates
| Standard-rated (5%) | 5% |
|---|---|
| Zero-rated (0%) | 0% |
| Exempt | 0% |
| Out of scope | 0% |
Rates shown above are for Domestic supply; this pack also defines Export for cross-border or special-case supplies.
Price display
Ochre's default for United Arab Emirates is tax-exclusive pricing on a line item.
For consumer-facing (B2C) prices, the displayed price must include tax.
Rounding
Tax is rounded half up, applied once for the invoice total, to a precision of 0.01.
Mandatory invoice fields
- Document title (e.g. “Tax Invoice”)
- Seller's tax registration number
- Customer's tax registration number (B2B)
- Issue date
- Date of supply
- Tax broken down by rate
- Reverse-charge statement (where it applies)
Fiscal year & dates
The fiscal year starts January 1. Dates print in DD/MM/YYYY order.
Currency
AED (AED), shown to 2 decimal places.
E-invoicing
A Peppol-based Continuous Transaction Control model is phasing in and is NOT yet mandatory as of 2026-07-19. Voluntary/pilot from July 2026. Phase 1 (AED 50M+ revenue): appoint an ASP by 30 Oct 2026, go-live 1 Jan 2027. Phase 2 (<AED 50M): ASP by 31 Mar 2027, go-live 1 Jul 2027. Phase 3 (government): go-live 1 Oct 2027. Scope is B2B/B2G; B2C is out of scope. Timeline is strong secondary-source consensus, not primary-confirmed — Ochre needs no e-invoicing integration at launch but should review this pack before 1 Jan 2027.