Five entities. Three clean audits. AED 380k recovered.

The situation

A Dubai-based F&B group had grown rapidly over three years, expanding from two venues to five across the city. Each venue operated as a separate legal entity under a common holding structure. The group's original bookkeeper had managed to keep pace with one entity but had fallen significantly behind as the business scaled.

By the time the group's managing director contacted AMT Sphere, the situation was as follows: 14 months of bookkeeping records across three entities were unreconciled and incomplete; two consecutive VAT quarterly filing cycles had been missed across the group; corporate tax registration had not been completed for any of the five entities, despite the group's financial year having started after the CT regime's effective date; and one entity had received a formal notice from the Federal Tax Authority requesting clarification on its filing position.

The director was concerned about the accumulated penalties, the FTA notice, and the risk of disruption to the group's operating licences. He had spoken to two other accounting firms before reaching us. Both had declined to take on the engagement, citing the complexity of the catch-up work required across five separate entities.

What we did

1. Week 1–2

   Full diagnostic across all five entities

   We assigned a senior consultant and a dedicated bookkeeper to the group for the first two weeks. The diagnostic identified the exact scope of the gap: unreconciled POS data across 14 months, missing supplier invoices across three entities, and misclassified expenses that had inflated apparent revenue.

2. Week 3–4

   Bookkeeping reconstruction

   We rebuilt 14 months of bookkeeping records from primary sources — bank statements, POS exports, supplier invoices, and expense receipts. Where documentation was genuinely missing, we applied the appropriate accounting standards for estimates and documented the basis clearly. The reconstructed records were reconciled to the entities' bank accounts to the transaction level.

3. Week 4

   VAT filing — late submissions with voluntary disclosure

   We prepared and submitted the two outstanding VAT quarterly returns for the applicable entities. Rather than simply filing and hoping for the best, we prepared voluntary disclosure documentation alongside the submissions — clearly presenting the gap, the reason, and the corrected position. This approach, which demonstrates good faith engagement with the authority, resulted in a significantly reduced penalty outcome compared to a standard late filing.

4. Week 5–6

   Corporate tax registration for all five entities

   We completed corporate tax registration through the EmaraTax portal for all five entities within the same fortnight. We identified that two of the entities qualified for Small Business Relief given their revenue levels, reducing their compliance overhead significantly. The remaining three were registered as standard taxable persons with the appropriate financial year designations.

5. Month 2

   FTA review response

   We prepared a comprehensive, documented response to the FTA clarification notice received by one entity. The response included the reconstructed bookkeeping records, the voluntary disclosure filings, the corporate tax registration confirmation, and a forward-looking compliance schedule. The review was closed without further action within three weeks of submission.

6. Ongoing

   Monthly close and quarterly filings

   We assumed full responsibility for the monthly accounting close process across all five entities, delivering a consolidated management report to the group director by the fifth working day of each month. VAT returns have been filed on time every quarter since the initial restructure.

The results

• ✓

  AED 380,000 — in VAT reclaims identified and recovered in year one — input tax credit positions that had not been claimed during the gap period and were captured during the bookkeeping reconstruction.

• ✓

  3 consecutive clean audits — delivered across all five entities for three consecutive financial years following the restructure. Zero FTA penalties in any period since AMT Sphere assumed responsibility for the filings.

• ✓

  FTA review closed — without further action within three weeks of our response submission — no additional penalties, no escalation, no disruption to the group's operating licences.

• ✓

  3 weeks early — each annual audit delivered ahead of the statutory deadline, giving the group's director and investors a complete financial picture before year-end.

• ✓

  Two entities qualified for Small Business Relief — reducing their corporate tax compliance overhead to a simplified annual filing — saving the group an estimated AED 28,000 per year in audit and preparation costs across those two entities.

“Two other firms looked at our situation and walked away. AMT took it on, cleaned up 14 months of complexity in six weeks, and our books have been spotless ever since. They know what they are doing and they pick up the phone.”

— Managing Director, Dubai F&B Group (identity withheld under NDA)

What came next

The group has since expanded to a sixth venue. We managed the new entity's registration, trade licence coordination, and integration into the group's existing consolidated accounting structure — all completed before the venue's opening week. The managing director uses our monthly consolidated report as the basis for his board presentations and investor updates.

We also advised the group on the structuring of a management fee arrangement between the holding entity and the operating venues — a change that materially simplified the group's intercompany accounting and reduced the complexity of its annual corporate tax filing.

What made the difference

Two things distinguished the outcome here from what a standard catch-up filing would have achieved.

The first was the voluntary disclosure approach to the late VAT filings. Presenting a clear, documented account of what happened and what the corrected position was — rather than simply filing the outstanding returns without explanation — demonstrated the kind of good-faith engagement that leads to proportionate outcomes. The result was a significantly better penalty position than a bare late filing would have produced.

The second was the identification of the AED 380,000 in unclaimed input tax credit. This was not money that had been lost — it was money the group was entitled to claim but had never captured because the original bookkeeping had not been structured to identify and record it. The reconstruction of 14 months of records at the transaction level was the only way to recover it. A surface-level catch-up filing would have missed it entirely.