New FTA Rules on How Accounting Records Must Be Kept in the UAE

The FTA (Federal Tax Authority) has issued Decision No. 4 of 2026, which sets out how businesses must maintain the information held in their accounting records and commercial books. The Decision took effect on 30.07.26. It does not change how long records must be kept, but it does define what an acceptable copy of a record looks like.

What the Decision Covers

Federal Decree-Law No. 28 of 2022 on Tax Procedures, together with its Executive Regulation, already requires businesses in the UAE to keep accounting records and commercial books. What has been missing until now is a clear standard for those records when they are stored as scans, photographs or digital files rather than as paper originals. Decision No. 4 of 2026 fills that gap.

The rules apply to any person subject to record-keeping obligations under UAE tax legislation, whether the business is registered for VAT (Value Added Tax), CIT (Corporate Income Tax), or both. For most companies operating in the Dubai business environment, that means every entity in the group.

Three Rules That Apply to Every Record

Article 2 of the Decision sets out three requirements.

1. Records and commercial books must be complete and identical to the original documents.
2. They must be clear and easily legible.
3. Access must be granted to the Authority upon request, including access to the system where the records are stored.

A Copy Has to Be a Full Copy

An electronic copy or a photocopy must reproduce the original in full, with every page present and in the same order as the original document. Scanning only part of a document is expressly not accepted.

In practice, this rules out a common business habit: scanning the pages that carry the figures and discarding the terms and conditions, annexes, or reverse sides. If the original contract ran to eight pages, the archived copy needs eight pages. A supplier invoice with a second page of line items is not a compliant record if only the first page was captured.

Quality, Resolution and Fading

Copies must be of sufficient quality and resolution that the data remains clear and easily legible when displayed on a computer screen. For paper copies, the ink and paper used must be of a quality that prevents the copy from fading across the whole retention period.

Coloured originals may be kept as non-coloured copies, provided all details stay clearly legible. Thermal paper receipts deserve particular attention, because they fade within months rather than years and are one of the most common weak points in expense documentation.

The Authority Must Be Able to Get In

Where electronic copies or the systems that hold them are protected by encryption or passwords, the business must provide the keys or passwords required for the Authority to gain access.

For physical archives, access extends to the premises where the documents are stored.

Outsourcing Does Not Transfer Responsibility

Article 4 permits a business to engage a third party to maintain its records and commercial books. It also states that the business remains legally responsible for maintaining those records and for keeping them safe.

Appointing an accounting firm, a document storage provider, or a cloud archiving service is therefore entirely acceptable. The liability, however, is on the business.

What This Means for Your Business

The requirements are specific, and a tax audit is the wrong time to discover that an archive is not in good order. It is worth reviewing how documents are scanned and at what quality, whether full documents are captured rather than selected pages, where the files are stored, who controls the credentials, and how quickly a complete and legible record could be produced if the Authority requested it.