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Do You Qualify for the UAE R&D Tax Credit?
No pre-approval, no claim. The UAE requires written approval from the Emirates R&D Council before the credit can enter your Corporate Tax return. Approval is a gating condition with no exceptions. Four gates decide whether you qualify.
The four gates, explained in six minutes
Everything on this page, walked through by our R&D tax team. Watch it end to end, or jump to the gate that applies to you.
Approval comes first
The Emirates R&D Council assesses your project before any benefit exists. That makes the application, not the tax return, the moment your credit is won or lost.
Assess each project against the five criteria and build the technical narrative and expenditure breakdown.
Obtain Council pre-approval for each project claimed, following the Council’s prescribed form, manner and timeline.
The Emirates R&D Council assesses the project. Without approval, there is no claim and no fallback.
Include the credit in your Corporate Tax return, with proof of approval attached.
Council pre-approval is mandatory for each R&D project claimed. Applications are submitted through TAWWER, the digital platform of the Emirates Research and Development Council and the single channel for pre-approval, and proof of approval must accompany the tax credit claim. Submission is through TAWWER. As at 27 October 2026, ERDC’s guidance is that each application is either Pre-Approved or Rejected, and a pre-approval can cover less than was applied for. ERDC may first issue a Request for Information, which is not a rejection but must be answered within 20 business days. Calendar-year 2026 companies must apply by 26 February 2027 (40 business days after 31 December 2026).
Official sources: Cabinet Decision No. 215 of 2025 and Ministerial Decision No. 24 of 2026.
Four gates. You must pass all four.
Set out in Cabinet Decision No. 215 of 2025 and Ministerial Decision No. 24 of 2026.
Entity
A Qualifying Entity is one of two types (CD 215, Art. 1). Free Zone entities can qualify, but only on extra conditions.
R&D must be conducted through the Permanent Establishment, and only expenditure attributable to it counts.
Five-year claw-back: within five years of the end of the period in which you last claimed, utilised credits become Payable Tax and unutilised credits are forfeited if the entity ceases to be a Taxable Person, becomes a QFZP, elects Small Business Relief, enters liquidation or redomiciles outside the UAE. Genuine business restructuring is excepted (MD 24, Art. 16).
Activity
All five criteria must be met at once (MD 24, Art. 3(1)), assessed against the OECD Frascati Manual. Partial satisfaction fails.
The activity must aim to produce new findings. Being new to the business is not sufficient by itself. All five criteria must be met, having regard to the OECD Frascati Manual: novel, creative, uncertain, systematic, and transferable or reproducible.
Fails when: configuring off-the-shelf tools. Customisation isn’t novelty.
Involves original concepts or hypotheses.
Fails when: routine feature work using established methods.
The outcome, or the route to it, isn’t known in advance
Fails when: the solution is known and only implementation remains.
Follows a documented plan and budget.
Fails when: work is informal and untracked. The Council can’t approve what it can’t see.
Results can be reproduced or applied elsewhere.
Fails when: know-how lives only in engineers’ heads.
The five-criteria test needs expert interpretation against the Frascati Manual.
Expenditure
Both the amount and the type of spend must qualify (CD 215, Art. 5; MD 24, Arts. 8–11).
AED 500,000
AED 5,000,000
Staff costs
+30% upliftSalaries, allowances, insurance, pensions, gratuity, bonuses and benefits for UAE-based R&D staff. Part-time apportioned. ESOPs excluded. EPWs qualify.
Materials consumed and no longer usable: lab materials, non-capital software licences, water, fuel, power, clinical trial payments. Apportioned if partly used.
UAE-based subcontractor, work done in the UAE, no chain subcontracting. Related parties need audited accounts and transfer pricing.
Arm’s length contributions to joint R&D. Only your own contributed portion qualifies.
The above costs where capitalised for internally generated intangibles arising from qualifying R&D.
Staffing
The credit is progressive across three tiers. Each tier needs both its expenditure band and its staff count – miss the headcount and you drop to the highest tier you do satisfy (MD 24, Art. 2(7)).
The credit is progressive across three tiers. Each tier needs both its expenditure band and its staff count – miss the headcount and you drop to the highest tier you do satisfy (MD 24, Art. 2(7)).
See what your credit could be worth
Staffing
The Council won’t ask whether your work is novel, creative, uncertain, systematic and transferable. It will ask you to prove it. In the UK, the most common reason claims fail is a vague technical narrative – genuine R&D described in marketing language. Four things make an application defensible:
ICAEW Chartered Accountants, AED 396M+ (£80M+) in R&D incentives secured in the UK 1,300+ R&D claims processed (UK practice)
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a startup with no revenue claim the credit?
Is the credit a cash refund?
Does a Free Zone company qualify?
Can I claim for overseas team members?
When do pre-approval applications open?
The official route is TAWWER. Access is granted via UAE PASS and must be approved by your FTA-registered authorised signatory before any application can be submitted. Prepare project documentation and expenditure records, and follow its prescribed submission timeline.
Before you can submit anything, an authorised individual must request organisation access in TAWWER via UAE PASS, and your FTA-registered authorised signatory must approve that request. Start this early – it gates everything downstream.
Start preparing now
Prepare the technical and financial evidence for your R&D projects and follow the Council’s current application requirements. Keep records as the work progresses. Prefer us to handle it end to end? See our R&D tax services.