Federal Tax Authority records rise in tax registered businesses

Abu Dhabi: The Federal Tax Authority has revealed that the number of tax registered businesses has increased thanks to the growing awareness among business sectors, and the ease and flexibility of electronic tax procedures available through the Authority’s official website, which was developed during the year 2019.

Khalid Ali Al Bustani, Director General of the Federal Tax Authority (FTA), stressed that 2020 will witness further development to the online services, as part its efforts to manage, collect, and implement taxes.

Al Bustani added that the continuous development of FTA services aim to maintain the best quality standards in light of having a fully electronic tax system that is the first of its kind regionally. He noted that the number of businesses registered with the authority through individual registration or a tax group increased to about 312,000.

According to FTA statistics, the total number of refund requests received through the tax recovery mechanism for the construction of houses amounted to 2,366 applications until December 2019, 1474 of which were approved for citizens who recovered the tax they paid for building their homes with a total value of Dh84.07 million, while legal measures are being taken regarding other requests submitted to the authority.

Some 539 applications valued at about Dh23.74 million were approved until the end of June 2019, with a record semi-annual growth of 254.18 per cent in the value of the recovered tax and 173.5 per cent in the approved applications.

During the past six months, 935 new applications were approved at a value of about Dh60.33 million, and the monthly average number of approved applications were 154 applications, while the average value of the tax recovered for citizens about building their new homes amounted to Dh10.1 million.