The FTA Is Now Comparing Your VAT and Corporate Tax Numbers Automatically

By Consaya Editorial — 2026-07-05

The FTA has switched from onboarding to enforcement. EmaraTax, their digital filing portal, is now running your VAT returns against your corporate tax filings automatically.

For five years they focused on getting everyone registered. Get the VAT back in. Get the corporate tax returns in. Tick the box, move to the next one. That era is finished. Now the authority has a full dataset—your VAT history, your corporate tax filings, the same periods overlaid—and it's comparing them line by line. If the turnover you reported to VAT doesn't match the revenue on your corporate tax return, the system has already flagged you. There's no waiting for an auditor to notice something odd. The machine spots it first. The human follows up later.

The numbers tell you how serious this is. The FTA has sharply scaled up inspections and enforcement collections over the past two years — a large rise in on-site visits and hundreds of millions of dirhams in unpaid tax and penalties recovered. That wasn't a campaign against the big multinationals. That was the same risk-based system scanning through filings, finding gaps, and sending notices.

Two patterns are drawing the most immediate heat.

The first is straightforward: your VAT-reported turnover doesn't match your corporate tax revenue. Sometimes that's legitimate. Out-of-scope supplies. Exempt income. Timing differences between quarters. But you need the paper to explain it. If the gap just sits in the system with no supporting document attached, you look like you're hiding something. You're not; it just looks that way.

The second is messier. Companies that filed an initial corporate tax return and then went quiet. The FTA treats that as a red flag because either the business actually wound down without proper deregistration or the filings simply stopped. Neither story is comfortable when the authority can audit back 15 years in cases where they suspect deliberate evasion. That's the extended limitation period. It's not five years or seven. It's 15.

Penalties hurt too.

If the FTA finds an error themselves—not because you disclosed it—they'll add 15% of the unpaid tax on top of what you owe. That's not crippling by itself. The real problem is that one flagged discrepancy tends to open the full audit file. One mismatch invites scrutiny of everything else. Once they're in, they're in.

The sensible move is to reconcile now. Map every line where your VAT and corporate tax numbers could legitimately diverge. Write down the reason. Attach the supporting documents—supplier invoices, exemption certificates, whatever you need. If there's a genuine gap with a genuine explanation, file it away before the EmaraTax notice arrives. The FTA's own published guidance is clear: voluntary disclosure works better than waiting for them to find it.

This is why keeping your books filing-ready matters. When Consaya generates your VAT 201 return and your corporate tax filing pack each quarter, everything runs against the same ledger. No mismatches because there's only one set of numbers. The system flags what's due so compliance isn't a scramble at the last moment.

2026 isn't a transition year. 2023 and 2024 were transition. What's running now is enforcement with a 135% increase in inspection capacity.

General information, not advice. Verify your own position against the FTA and your adviser before acting.