Oracle EBS & VAT in UAE

VAT is coming to U.A.E. on January 1st, 2018.

Many businesses in U.A.E. use Oracle e-Business Suite to manage their financials; until recently, the platform supported everything required by local laws/regulations, without requiring a localisation.

For the most part, setting up your EBS environment to be compliant with U.A.E. VAT regulations is a straightforward regime setup. There is one catch: in many countries there are two trigger points for VAT application and this is what standard Oracle EBS provides, either on supply of goods or services or when a tax invoice is generated. There is a third trigger point for U.A.E. which relates to Pre-payments, Deposits and Advances. Oracle EBS (12.x) does not calculate tax at this stage, by default.

As of November 17th, 2017, the final VAT Regulations have not yet been issued. As such, Oracle have not confirmed that they will be creating a localisation for U.A.E. and have instead directed customers to install an EMEA localisation in order to perform this tax calculation.

Whilst this is not ideal, it will suffice until such time as Oracle release a U.A.E. localisation. You can get updates via the E-Business Suite Financials Legislative Updates Center or keep an eye here to see if the position has changed.

Don't wait until it's too late - be prepared for January 1st!