UAE Sets New Standards for Electronic and Photocopied Accounting Records

• UAE Federal Tax Authority Decision No. 4 of 2026 requires retained copies of accounting records and commercial books to be complete, identical to the originals, clearly legible and accessible to the authority on request.
• Electronic or photocopied records must reproduce the entire original document, with all pages retained in the same sequence. Partial scanning is expressly rejected. [aaccounting.me]
• Businesses must provide access to the systems in which records are stored, including encryption keys or passwords where needed. Outsourcing record retention does not transfer the legal responsibility away from the business.  [tax.gov.ae]

Extended article

The UAE Federal Tax Authority has published detailed requirements governing the maintenance of accounting records and commercial books in electronic or photocopied form.

FTA Decision No. 4 of 2026 was issued on 2 June 2026 and took effect on publication in the Official Gazette, dated by the authority as 30 July 2026. The English text was subsequently published on the FTA website. [tax.gov.ae], [aaccounting.me]

The Decision supplements the record-keeping obligations contained in Federal Decree-Law No. 28 of 2022 on Tax Procedures and its Executive Regulation.

The central requirements are completeness, legibility and accessibility. Where records are kept as electronic copies or photocopies, the copy must be a complete and identical reproduction of the original. Every page must be retained and presented in the same sequence as the original document. Capturing only selected pages or relevant sections is not accepted.  [aaccounting.me]

Electronic records must have sufficient quality and resolution to ensure that the information remains clear and readable when displayed on a computer screen. A black-and-white copy of a coloured document may be retained where all information remains legible. Physical photocopies must use ink and paper of a quality that prevents the copy from fading during the required retention period.  [akmglobal.com]

The Decision also addresses access to protected files and record-keeping systems. Businesses must grant the FTA access to records when requested, including access to the system in which they are stored. If documents or systems are encrypted or password-protected, the relevant passwords or encryption keys must be provided.

Businesses may use accountants, cloud providers, document-management providers or other third parties to retain records. However, the taxable person remains legally responsible for the maintenance, integrity and safety of those records. A service-provider failure therefore does not remove the taxpayer’s responsibility. [akmglobal.com]

Although the Decision is a general tax-procedure measure rather than a VAT-only amendment, it is directly relevant to VAT compliance. Purchase invoices, sales invoices, customs records, contracts, credit notes and evidence supporting input VAT recovery all fall within the wider accounting-record environment.

Businesses operating in the UAE should review whether scanning processes capture every page, including annexes and standard terms, whether archived files remain readable, and whether information stored by third-party providers can be produced promptly during an FTA review.

External links

• UAE FTA Decision No. 4 of 2026 [tax.gov.ae]
• Detailed overview of the UAE record-retention requirements [aaccounting.me]