STEP 1 OF 3
Personal information
Side Tab Form
"*" indicates required fields
When can businesses in the UAE recover VAT on employees’ mobile phones? The UAE Federal Tax Authority has issued a clarification.
The clarification lays out criteria for claiming VAT on employees’ phones. The employer must:
It also needs to be the case that the actual use of the phones does not constitute a personal benefit to employees. As the guidance points out, UAE rules prohibit the recovery of input tax incurred on goods or services that are provided without charge to the employee “unless there is a legal or contractual obligation on the employer to provide such service in order for the employee to perform their role, or it is a deemed supply.”
That is, simply because a company supplies an employee with goods or services, it does not automatically follow that the provision is a business expense which is subject to VAT reclaim. The items in questions must be provided for business purposes, properly understood, and cannot constitute a personal benefit to the employee.
The Federal Tax Authority adds that the above business-use only provisions need to be actively implemented and monitored. Specifically, the business must regularly monitor data and airtime use and justify apparent divergences from proper use. Moreover, the company must take action against employees that use their business phones for personal use.
From an administrative perspective, the business must be VAT registered and it must acquire the phone, airtime and data packages in its own name. The businesses must also retain all applicable invoices.
The authority adds that these policies must be in place at the time the employee is supplied with their mobile phones. The authority will not accept backdated policies.
Get a smart end-to-end VAT reclaim solution that makes managing invoices, complex regulations and VAT recovery processes simple, efficient and cost-effective. Get in touch with VAT IT for a smart solution that ensures you are always 100% VAT compliant and maximises your company’s reclaim opportunities.
Spain’s e-Invoicing Landscape Changes Again: VERI*FACTU Postponed as Mandatory B2B e-Invoicing Moves Towards October 2027 Spain has taken two important steps in the development of its digital invoicing framework. On the one hand, the Ministry of Finance has announced plans to postpone the outstanding obligations under the invoicing software rules commonly associated with VERI*FACTU until […]
Can You Reclaim VAT on Corporate Events When Family Members Are Invited? Most finance teams already know that VAT on staff entertainment is a complicated area. What is less well known is what happens when a corporate event extends beyond employees to include their families. Does inviting partners and children to a company away day […]
Where did that invoice go? Sage Intacct customers won’t have to ask anymore Every finance team that sells across borders knows the feeling. You’ve issued the invoice, the work is done, and now you wait. Did it arrive? Did the local tax authority accept it? Is it sitting in a queue somewhere waiting to be […]
eezi by VAT IT and Consilio.io: SAP Concur e-Invoicing Partnership Every Business is Also Somebody Else’s Supplier A finance team running SAP Concur usually thinks of e-Invoicing as an incoming problem. A supplier issues something and Concur Invoice has to make sense of it. But that same business is also a supplier to somebody […]
When You Need an Intra-Community VAT Number and How to Get One If your business buys or sells goods and services across EU borders, intra-community VAT is something you will need to understand. It is not the same as domestic VAT, and the rules around registration, invoicing, and reporting work differently from what most businesses […]
5 Top AI-Powered Tax Compliance Tools Tax compliance software has come a long way and what used to mean basic automation now includes machine learning, smarter data processing and tools that can spot problems before they become expensive. The category has a new name: AI-powered tax compliance. For finance and tax teams managing tax […]
This webinar explains how US businesses can identify and recover foreign VAT, breaking down key concepts like reciprocity and showing where refund opportunities are often missed.