Excise Tax on Staff Sales and Discounts

Discounts move the till price, not the tax: excise is anchored to the excise price, not what staff paid.

There is no quarterly option and no annual return: twelve periods, twelve returns, twelve payments. The cycle for each month is: capture every excise movement (imports, production, releases, sales, stock changes), calculate the tax per SKU — 100% of excise price or the per-litre band — reconcile stock to the return, file on EmaraTax, and pay. Then archive the month's evidence file for five years.

The return reconciles the month's excise position: goods imported, goods produced, goods released for consumption, and the tax calculated on each line. Sweetened drinks are reported by sugar band with lab-report references; 100% goods by excise price with RSP references.

Before submitting, run the pre-filing checks: RSPs current, bands evidenced, stock reconciled, imports matched to customs declarations, and the payment reference ready. An amended return or voluntary disclosure fixes errors — voluntarily and fast is always cheaper than discovered.

Pay through EmaraTax — by card via the MagnatiPay gateway or by bank transfer to your GIBAN (the FTA has not accepted eDirham since 30 October 2022). The reference number is critical: a payment the FTA cannot match to your account is a payment you have not made, legally speaking. Keep bank confirmations and EmaraTax receipts for five years.

Where several periods are owed, the FTA applies payments to the oldest debt first — so a payment you meant for this month may legally clear last month's arrears, leaving this month still 'unpaid' for penalty purposes. Clear arrears deliberately, oldest first.

The excise return and the financial statements must tell the same story. Monthly, reconcile: the return's import lines to customs declarations and purchase ledgers; production lines to batch logs and inventory; sales lines to the revenue ledger; and the closing stock to the balance sheet inventory.

Excise paid is part of inventory cost — it sits in cost of goods sold as the goods sell, not as a recoverable tax asset. VAT accounting runs alongside: the VAT return's excise-inclusive values should foot to the excise return's tax base where they overlap. Differences the business cannot explain are exactly what FTA data-matching is built to find.

Close the month with a signed reconciliation pack — return, stock count, movement log, calculation trail — and archive it for five years.

Found an error after filing? Small slips can go through an amended return; material errors belong in a voluntary disclosure, ideally within 20 days of discovering them. Voluntary correction dramatically improves the penalty outcome versus FTA discovery.

If you cannot pay on time, pay what you can — partial payment at least stops interest accruing on the portion paid. Document any EmaraTax technical failure with screenshots and timestamps, but do not treat a glitch as an extension: file by every available means.

Tax rules change: confirm the current position on tax.gov.ae before you file, pay or rely on any figure on this page.