UAE Sets Five-Year Limit on Excess VAT Recovery, with 2026 Transitional Relief

The UAE will impose a new five-year deadline, effective January 1, 2026, for recovering excess input VAT.
Businesses must use or refund VAT credits within five years from the end of the tax period in which they arose; they can no longer carry them forward indefinitely.
A transitional relief allows older VAT credits from 2018–2020 to still be claimed if a refund request is filed through EmaraTax by December 31, 2026.
If businesses miss that deadline, those historic VAT credits will be permanently lost.

Note that this post was (partially) written with the help of AI. It is always useful to review the original source material, and where needed to obtain (local) advice from a specialist.