Emaratax: The gateway to the future of tax administration

A visit to the Federal Tax Authority (FTA) stand in the recently concluded Gitex Global was enthralling. The passion and warmth of the FTA personnel was evidently visible. FTA showcased its recently announced integrated platform, ‘Emaratax’. ‘Emaratax’ is a creative portmanteau/blend of ‘Emarat’ and ‘Tax’.

FTA’s team has worked for over two years, assimilating the suggestions of all stakeholders and global best practices, to introduce a seamless and proactive digital services. The new platform comes with an equally convenient mobile application. The new platform will have 100+ features which will be rolled out progressively over the coming few months. One could easily feel the sense of excitement, achievement and pride when FTA’s team was explaining the features of the new platform to every single visitor. Some of the key features of Emaratax are as follows:

Compliance status

The current platform shows a list of only such VAT returns which have been submitted by a taxpayer. If a taxpayer misses out to submit one or multiple VAT returns, it is difficult to identity if any, and how many, VAT returns are pending.

The new platform list down all the pending VAT returns on a single screen. One quick glance will help the taxpayers to understand their compliance status and the action points.

Correspondence records

Taxpayers often face a difficult task to retain and collate the correspondence with the tax authorities. Finding an old correspondence becomes challenging whenever there has been a change in the official email id or an employee leaves the organisation.

The new platform will have a ‘correspondence’ section containing the correspondence with the tax authorities.

Single email id for multiple companies

There has been a general impression that a distinct email id is required to register every new company. Businesses having multiple companies had to often create numerous email ids and then keep a track of each email id to correspond with the tax authorities.

Pankaj S. Jain is the managing director of AskPankaj Tax Advisors. For feedback and queries, you may write to info@AskPankaj.com. Views expressed are his own and do not reflect the newspaper’s policy.