01
Your foreign purchases
Software, servers or ads paid to a supplier outside the UAE must go through reverse charge: you declare the 5% the supplier didn’t charge. In Zoho the entry looks fine. In an audit, it’s a filing error.
For founders who do their own booksDubai and across the UAE, free zone and mainland
Catch your UAE VAT mistakes before they become FTA fines.
Every month it reads your Zoho Books, tells you how to classify each transaction and catches VAT mistakes before the FTA does, telling you which ones cost money. Often ten minutes a month, no accounting firm.
AED 1,999AED 899once, the kit is yours
Launch price, paid once. No Tax Watch subscription, no setup fee: a step-by-step guide walks you through. Requires a Claude subscription. Why not just ask ChatGPT?
Scans FTA and Ministry of Finance texts every week · tells you at your monthly check-in which ones affect you
Opening early 2027, with the buyers’ Discord community. Read-only: it changes nothing in your books and files nothing for you.
By Yamin Gherbi, founder of Craft Solution Tech (Sharjah). Page updated on . General information, not tax advice.
Here is your monthly check-in.
Tax Watch
Sample monthly report
monthly check
3 things worth a look this month
- Your call
A transfer between your own accounts booked as a sale
AED 12,000 moved between your two accounts was recorded as revenue. It inflates your turnover and pushes you toward the VAT threshold for nothing.
- Likely
Three foreign purchases missing reverse-charge VAT
For two, the report tells you what to fix. The third needs a quick yes or no: a supplier it has never seen.
- Checked
Everything else: nothing to do
The other foreign purchases have no net cost. It doesn’t bother you with what costs you nothing.
Next deadline
This quarter's VAT return
New FTA and MoF texts this month
2, none affect you
- Read-only
- Official source cited
- 10 min a month
Not one more dashboard: one page, when you ask for your monthly check. Only what needs you. Illustrative example, no client data.
The real risk
Three common VAT mistakes when you do your own books.
None of them looks like a mistake in Zoho. Two are filing errors in an FTA audit; the third quietly costs you money.
02
Your own transfers
Money moved between two company accounts, booked as a sale. Your turnover inflates: it pushes you toward the VAT registration threshold and the Small Business Relief limit for no reason, and swells your taxable base.
03
VAT you never get back
An invoice in your personal name, paid by the company: that VAT can’t be recovered. It’s money lost, not delayed.
What a slip costs
- Late VAT registration
- 10,000AEDLate VAT registration
- Per missing tax invoice
- 2,500AEDPer missing tax invoice
- On late VAT payment
- 14%a yearOn late VAT payment
What it does for you
Every transaction explained, your VAT checked, the law watched.
You don’t need to know how it works. You need to know what to do, and when.
Every week
It keeps track of new tax texts
Every week it picks up new FTA and Ministry of Finance publications. At your monthly check-in, it tells you which ones affect your company, and only those.
Only what affects you
Every month
Where each transaction goes, in 10 minutes
It reads your Zoho Books (read-only) and tells you, transaction by transaction, where it belongs: uncategorised transactions, foreign purchases, internal transfers, zero-rated sales. Each issue comes with what it costs you, or doesn’t.
One page · 3 to 5 actions
Every quarter
Your VAT return, largely prepared
It prepares your purchases (box 9), reverse charge (boxes 3 and 10) and zero-rated sales (box 4), each traced to its transactions. Standard-rated sales (box 1) are still yours to enter for now. It won’t call the return “ready” while a question is open.
Boxes prepared · open questions listed
Every year
Corporate Tax: filed with you, step by step
Registration, Small Business Relief, free zone status, deadline: it helps you prepare and fill in your Corporate Tax return in EmaraTax, with your figures from Zoho. You check it before you file.
Corporate Tax return prepared with you · deadlines
Ask your VAT and Corporate Tax questions
Any tax question in between? Ask it. It answers from its sourced rulebook, and when the answer isn’t settled, it says so instead of guessing.
The real question
“I’ll just ask ChatGPT.” Sure, if you know what to ask.
ChatGPT answers the question you ask. Tax Watch finds the one you didn’t, in your own books. And on UAE VAT, many online answers don’t follow the FTA’s position: a Saudi client, for instance, isn’t invoiced the way most of them say.
Reads your books and finds the mistakes
Tax WatchYes, monthly, read-only
- Free ChatGPT
- Only what you paste in
- Zoho alone
- Totals what you entered, right or wrong
- An accountant
- Yes
Applies the rule in force on the transaction date
Tax WatchYes, dated and versioned rules
- Free ChatGPT
- Not reliably
- Zoho alone
- No
- An accountant
- Yes
Says when it isn’t sure
Tax WatchOn every flag: checked, likely or your call
- Free ChatGPT
- Rarely
- Zoho alone
- N/A
- An accountant
- Yes
Tracks new FTA texts for you
Tax WatchWeekly
- Free ChatGPT
- No
- Zoho alone
- No
- An accountant
- Sometimes
Files your returns
Tax WatchNo, you file
- Free ChatGPT
- No
- Zoho alone
- Yes, if you submit from it
- An accountant
- Yes
Price
Tax WatchAED 899 once, + Claude subscription
- Free ChatGPT
- AED 0
- Zoho alone
- Already paid
- An accountant
- AED 500+ a month
The costliest rules (internal transfers, reverse charge, invoices in your own name) are tested code, not a generated answer. The AI talks to you; it doesn’t make up the law.
Why you can trust it
It would rather ask you than guess.
Every flag tells you how sure it is. A mistake shown before you file costs nothing; a mistake hidden behind a confident answer costs a penalty.
Checked
A written rule applies and the data is complete. The official source is cited.
Source cited
Likely
An assumption was needed. It’s written next to the result, not in a footnote.
Assumption shown
Your call
No rule settles it, or the stakes are too high. It stops and asks you.
Return not marked ready
Your VAT return never reaches “ready” while a question is open.
For the curious
Behind every answer: written, dated rules, not improvisation.
Behind it: 63 rules on VAT, Corporate Tax and related obligations, each one dated. When a rule rests on an official text, it is cited; when a source or a date is still to be checked, that is flagged, right down to your monthly check-in.
Seven families
- Sales
- Purchases
- Cash
- Setup
- Corporate tax
- Penalties
- Non-tax obligations
The rulebook isn’t frozen: when a text it picks up changes a rule, the new version is read twice against the official text and tested before it applies. Otherwise, it’s put to you.
- A firm’s note doesn’t make a rule
- A firm’s note, or a plausible answer from a model, triggers a check against the official text. Until that is done, the rule stays marked “to be checked”.
T-01CashOne rule, in full
A transfer between two of the company's own accounts is not a sale.
When
Money comes in from an account the company already owns.
Then
The entry leaves turnover and becomes an internal movement.
Why it matters
Booked as revenue, that transfer inflates turnover and skews the VAT threshold, Small Business Relief eligibility and the taxable base, all at once.
Tested on 12 real cases
Version 1.0
Another rule, two states: the late-payment penalty
The agent picks the version that applied on the transaction date, never the date it runs.
CD 49/2021CD 129/202514 April 2026
A fact predating the switch stays computed under the text of its time. Cases spanning both, with no published transition rules, are put to you as a question.
Where it comes from
Built on my own company first.
I do the books of Craft Solution Tech FZE-LLC, a Sharjah free zone company, myself. Going back over eleven months of entries, I found nine foreign purchases with no reverse charge. Nothing dramatic this time, but nothing Zoho had flagged either. Tax Watch is the tool I wish I’d had.
Where it stands
Done
Runs on my own company · 12 real cases replayed: 11 settled as by hand, the 12th asked
Early 2027
Opening, waiting list first
How it works
Set up in an hour, once. Then ten minutes a month.
At launch, Tax Watch is a kit that runs in your own Claude (Claude subscription required), paid once. It reads your Zoho without ever writing to it. An online version, nothing to install and billed monthly, will follow if the waiting list asks for it.
Your environment
Open the kit in Claude
Add the kit to your Claude and type “start”. It takes over from there. No terminal, nothing to host.
Answer about twenty questions
Legal form, VAT and Corporate Tax registration, bank accounts, regular suppliers. That’s what makes it accurate for your company.
Connect Zoho Books, read-only
Or an export from your software, or your invoices as they are. It copes, and tells you what it can’t see.
Each month, type “monthly check”
Ten minutes, 3 to 5 actions. The weekly watch runs on its own, and tells you when you next open Claude if it has stopped.
Read-only: nothing is written to your books.
Allow an hour the first time.
To be upfront: the first month is the most hands-on, because it is learning your suppliers. It gets sharper every month after that.
The community on Discord
Stuck one evening on a transaction? Someone’s been there before.
The kit does the checking. The community does the rest. The Tax Watch Discord opens with the kit, for those who buy it: you come for a setup issue or a transaction you can’t classify, and you stay for the people. Other freelancers and founders who do their own books in the UAE, sharing what they know.
- Mutual help. Setup, connecting Zoho, a transaction you can’t classify: you ask, someone answers.
- Good tips. Which bank takes freelancers, which free zone, which provider: what other members have learned.
- Opportunities. Projects and contacts shared between members. Included with the kit, no extra subscription.
Pricing
No accounting firm. Less risk of a fine.
You chose to do your own books. Tax Watch doesn’t replace you: it checks behind you. And you buy it once: the kit is yours, and the regulatory watch runs inside it.
An accountant
AED 500+a month
They keep your books and file for you. The right choice if you’d rather do nothing yourself.
Tax Watch
AED 899once
Instead of AED 1,999: launch price for the waiting list. Setup guide and Discord access included; Claude subscription extra.
One late VAT registration: AED 10,000. That’s more than eleven times the price of Tax Watch.
Lock in launch pricingPlainly
What Tax Watch won’t do
It writes nothing to your books and sends no report by email: everything happens in a conversation in your own Claude, which needs a Claude subscription.
It is not an FTA-registered tax agent or an accounting firm. It certifies and signs nothing.
It files nothing for you. It prepares; you, or your accountant, approve and submit.
It can be wrong. That’s why every flag carries its confidence level, and it never calls a return “ready” while a question is open.
Waiting list
Lock in launch pricing
Opening early 2027. Sign up and you’ll hear first, and keep launch pricing when it opens.
AED 1,999AED 899once, the kit is yours
Launch price: AED 899 instead of AED 1,999, paid once. Setup guide and Discord access included. Claude subscription required, not included.
Craft Solution Tech FZE-LLC — Sharjah Publishing City – Free Zone Authority
Questions it answers
UAE tax questions small businesses get wrong.
The questions that come up often, answered from the official texts. Ask your own the same way.
Do I need to register for VAT in the UAE?
Yes once your taxable supplies over the last 12 months exceed AED 375,000, or are expected to within the next 30 days. Between AED 187,500 and 375,000, registration is voluntary. Freelancers follow the same thresholds.
When is my UAE VAT return due?
By the 28th day after the end of your tax period, quarterly for most small businesses. Your periods are shown in EmaraTax. Tax Watch tracks the date and flags it at your monthly check-in once it is within 30 days.
I’m under Small Business Relief. Do I still file a Corporate Tax return?
Yes. The relief waives the tax, not the return: you must register, file and elect the relief in your return. It covers revenue up to AED 3 million, for tax periods ending on or before 31 December 2029 (Ministerial Decision 131 of 2026). Not available to a Qualifying Free Zone Person (0% regime): it is one or the other.
Does a free zone company need to register for Corporate Tax?
Yes. Free zone companies are taxable persons, even if they expect to pay 0%. Late registration is an AED 10,000 penalty.
I buy software or servers from abroad. Is there VAT to declare?
Yes: reverse charge at 5%, reported in boxes 3 and 10 of the VAT 201. You declare the VAT yourself and usually recover it in the same return, so the net cost is often zero, but leaving it out is still a filing error.
I’m in a free zone. Does VAT apply to me?
Yes. A free zone is a licensing status with no VAT effect in itself. Only a Designated Zone is treated as outside the UAE, and only for goods: services there are supplied in the UAE.
My client is in Saudi Arabia. Do I charge VAT?
According to the FTA, no: it recognises no other GCC state as an Implementing State (public clarification VATP019), so a Saudi, Omani, Qatari, Bahraini or Kuwaiti client is treated like any foreign client. A 2023 Federal Supreme Court ruling muddied this: Tax Watch follows the FTA’s position and tells you so.
My phone bill is in my own name, paid by the company. Can I recover the VAT?
Not while the invoice is in your personal name: that VAT is lost, not delayed. It becomes recoverable, within 5 years, if the supplier reissues the invoice to the company.
What is the penalty for paying UAE VAT late?
Since 14 April 2026, 14% a year, computed monthly (Cabinet Decision 129 of 2025). Before that date, the old schedule applies. For a delay spanning both, the transition rules haven’t been published: Tax Watch asks you rather than guessing.
When does e-invoicing start for small businesses?
For companies under AED 50 million turnover: appoint an accredited provider before 31 March 2027, compliant e-invoices from 1 July 2027. B2B and B2G; B2C is out of scope.
Does Tax Watch work with Zoho Books?
Yes, directly and read-only. No Zoho? An export from Xero, QuickBooks or a spreadsheet works, or your invoices as they are. It tells you what it can’t see.
Does it file my VAT or Corporate Tax return for me?
No. It prepares and checks. You file from Zoho Books (direct EmaraTax filing) or in EmaraTax yourself, or your accountant does. It is not an FTA-registered tax agent.
Do I need to be technical?
No. It runs in Claude: you talk to it in plain language. No terminal, no code.
What if I get stuck? Who helps me?
The Tax Watch Discord opens with the kit, for those who buy it: you ask your questions there when something goes wrong, and you meet other freelancers and founders who do their own books in the UAE.
Mainland or free zone: Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ras Al Khaimah, Ajman, Fujairah, Umm Al Quwain. VAT and Corporate Tax are federal.