On 30 September 2026, businesses across the UAE will file and pay Corporate Tax for periods ended 31 December 2025. The very next day, 1 October 2026, a quieter change takes effect that touches something they do far more often than once a year: deducting input tax. Federal Tax Authority Decision No. 13 of 2026 sets out measures a taxable person must take to verify the validity and integrity of a supply before recovering the VAT on it. It is not a headline reform, but it reaches into everyday accounts payable, and the businesses that read it early will build it into their process rather than discover it in a review.
What the Decision does
Issued under Article 54(bis) of the VAT Law and effective from 1 October 2026, the Decision is short, seven articles, but consequential. In essence, before you deduct input tax on a supply, you may be required to satisfy yourself that the supplier is real and the supply is genuine, and to document that you did. It formalises, as a legal obligation with conditions, the kind of diligence a careful business already applies to who it buys from and why. The aim is to keep input tax recovery tied to real, verifiable transactions.
The two things businesses get wrong
Almost every misreading of this Decision comes down to two points. Get these right and the rest follows.
The thresholds measure different things
There are two money figures in the exception, and they are not the same test. One is per supply; the other is per supplier, aggregated over time. Confusing them is the single most common error.
| Threshold | What it measures | Article |
|---|---|---|
| AED 10,000 | The value of a single supply, excluding VAT | Art 6 (1) |
| AED 100,000 | The total from one supplier across a rolling 12 months, back or forward | Art 6 (2) |
The exception lets you disregard the measures where a supply is under AED 10,000 excluding VAT. But it is switched off entirely if your total supplies from that supplier exceed AED 100,000 over the previous 12 months, or are expected to over the next 12. The consequence is counterintuitive and important: a business can be under AED 10,000 on every single invoice and still lose the exception, because the small invoices add up past AED 100,000 with that one supplier. The per-supply figure never rescues you once the per-supplier total is crossed.
The two branches run at different frequencies
Where full verification applies, it is not one task but two, and they do not happen on the same rhythm. This is the second point businesses miss.
| Branch | How often | Article |
|---|---|---|
| Verify the supplier | First dealing, or if not verified in the previous 12 months | Art 3, gated by Art 5 (1) |
| Verify the supply | Every taxable supply received or accepted, every time | Art 4, per Art 5 (2) |
Supplier verification is gated: you do it when you first deal with a supplier, and again only if you have not verified them in the previous twelve months. Supply verification has no such gate. It applies to every taxable supply you receive, every time, regardless of how well you know the supplier. A business that verifies a supplier once and then treats all its purchases from them as cleared has misread the Decision, because the supply checks never stop.
Work out what applies to you
Because the pathway branches on thresholds and frequency, the quickest way to see your own position is to walk it. We built an interactive tool that asks the few questions that matter and returns the exact measures you must take, with the article reference beside each, and a checklist you can print.
Open the Input Tax Verification tool and answer four short questions to see which measures apply to a given supply, and produce a printable checklist.
What verifying the supplier involves
When supplier verification is due, Article 3 sets out what it means in practice: confirm identity, confirm the place of business, and check for risk indicators.
| Check | What it requires |
|---|---|
| Identity | Natural person: valid Emirates ID or passport, and meet them in person or virtually before the supply. Legal person: verify incorporation and the authorised representative. |
| Place of business | Confirm a real place of business by electronic means or a field visit, compatible with the activity. |
| Risk indicators | None should apply: address changed more than twice in 12 months, key people changed more than twice, or transactions out of proportion to the business. |
There is a higher tier. Where supplies from the supplier exceed AED 375,000 over the previous or next 12 months, Article 3(4) adds two further checks: written confirmation from an authorised UAE bank that the supplier holds an account with no relevant reservations, and a review of publicly available reviews and media from reliable sources for anything inconsistent or suggestive of tax evasion. So the supplier thresholds themselves step up: standard checks, then enhanced checks past AED 375,000.
What verifying the supply involves
Article 4 is about the transaction itself, and it applies to every supply. The theme is that the deal should make commercial sense. The supplier's engagement should rest on genuine commercial reasons. Payment should be justifiable: a third party in the payment chain, or payment to an account outside the supplier's country of incorporation, needs a reasonable explanation, and consideration should move by electronic means, with cash allowed only on a documented, verifiable basis within the legal thresholds. And the circumstances should hold up: prices and margins not unjustifiably off-market, goods and services within the supplier's licensed activity, the authenticity and origin of goods and the supplier's right to sell them, and, where the supplier is an intermediary, a clear reason for that role.
Document it, and own it
Article 5 closes the loop. Beyond carrying out the checks, you must document the verification steps and retain the supporting records so the Authority can confirm they were done, and maintain a documented policy that names the people responsible for implementing, reviewing and supervising the procedures, with their powers and responsibilities set out clearly. In other words, the Decision expects not just that verification happens, but that it is evidenced and governed. Undocumented diligence, here as elsewhere in UAE tax, is close to no diligence at all.
What to do about it
Before the Decision takes effect on 1 October 2026, look at how you onboard and pay suppliers. Separate the two tests in your mind: AED 10,000 decides whether a single supply can be ignored, AED 100,000 per supplier decides whether that exception survives at all. Build supplier verification into onboarding and refresh it every twelve months, and build supply verification into every payment, because it never lapses. Set the enhanced checks to trigger past AED 375,000. And put the documentation and the responsibility policy in place now, so the evidence exists from day one. Input tax recovery is real money, and this Decision ties it to diligence you can show.
This article is general information and is not tax or legal advice, and reflects an unofficial reading of FTA Decision No. 13 of 2026. The Decision should be confirmed against its official text, and your position against your own circumstances. We would be glad to help you build supplier and supply verification into your process.