Penalties up to AED 5,000 per month — and you stay responsible for keeping your invoices

The UAE Ministry of Finance eInvoicing Guidelines v1.1 confirm that e-invoicing errors can trigger penalties of up to AED 5,000 per month. Just as important: you remain responsible for securely storing and retaining your e-invoices, credit notes and transmission logs, even when you use cloud hosting or an Accredited Service Provider. The records must stay retrievable by the Federal Tax Authority. Only machine-readable XML in PINT AE format sent through an ASP counts as a valid invoice — a PDF or paper copy on its own does not. UPDATE (13 September 2026): the full schedule in Cabinet Decision No. 106 of 2025 has five separate violations, and two of them run daily rather than monthly. Failure to implement e-invoicing or appoint a provider on time is AED 5,000 per month. An e-invoice not issued or sent within the specified timeframe is AED 100 per invoice, capped at AED 5,000 per month. A credit note not issued or sent in time is AED 100 per credit note, under a separate AED 5,000 monthly cap. Failure to notify the FTA of a system malfunction is AED 1,000 per day. Failure to notify your service provider of changes to your registered data is also AED 1,000 per day. The two daily fines are the ones small businesses do not see coming: both are administrative, both are about telling someone something, and neither has anything to do with whether your invoices are correct.

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