Key Findings
The Phase 2 review rates the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as overall Partially Compliant with the international standard. The UAE only established an EOI Unit in 2014, and there remains a significant backlog of unanswered requests. The report recommends that the UAE addresses the backlog of requests on an urgent basis, and increases its efforts to discuss and understand issues raised by its EOI partners through direct communication. The UAE’s legal framework generally ensure that ownership, accounting and banking information are available in accordance with the standard, and certain key information is in practice kept by the authorities. However, in respect of offshore companies in some of the free zones as well as partnerships, the monitoring of compliance with accounting record keeping obligations is very limited. In addition, given the many unanswered requests it is not clear that in every case where it was requested information would have been available. It is recommended that the UAE monitors the availability of information, and in particular underlying accounting documents, where this is requested by an EOI partner. Information is not always kept centrally and must be obtained through local authorities, which are not used to dealing with EOI requests for tax purposes. This has caused some practical difficulties. Although the UAE has already taken steps to improve the situation, this is still work in progress. For further information on the UAE’s exchange of information practices and to read the full report click here.