The periods, per chapter 5.4
| Case | Period |
|---|---|
| Taxable person | 5 years following the tax period the records relate to |
| Persons other than taxable persons (e.g. an unregistered business issuing Commercial Invoices) | 5 years from the end of the calendar year the document was created in |
| Real-estate records | 7 years from the end of the calendar year the document was created in |
| Dispute with the FTA, ongoing audit, or notice of intent to audit | 4 additional years |
| Voluntary disclosure submitted within the fifth year | 1 additional year from submission |
The legal basis is Article 3(1) of the Tax Procedures Executive Regulation (Cabinet Decision 74 of 2023). The periods are not new; what is new is that the electronic invoice and its data are now part of what is kept.
"Within the State" — the official reading
Article 11 of Decision 243 of 2025: a person subject to the system "shall store Electronic Invoices, Electronic Credit Notes, and any associated data within the State" for the Tax Procedures periods. Read literally, that worried anyone on a global cloud or a provider with servers outside the UAE. Guidelines v1.1 set three conditions under which a business is deemed compliant:
- Invoice records and associated data are retained in an electronic system that preserves their integrity and ensures secure retention.
- The storage infrastructure — "whether located inside or outside the UAE" — enables the taxpayer to provide the records promptly on request.
- The records can be retrieved and reproduced by the FTA in a complete and readable form.
In the text: "the policy intent of Article 11 is to ensure that Electronic Invoices, Electronic Credit Notes, and the data necessary to validate them remain accessible, reproducible, and verifiable by the FTA throughout the statutory retention period… irrespective of the geographic location of the servers, databases, or cloud-based solutions used to store them."
What is "associated data"?
The guidelines narrowed it deliberately: it "refers only to the information required to support the integrity, authenticity, and auditability of an Electronic Invoice or Electronic Credit Note", and does not extend to general business documentation or ancillary commercial information unless needed to confirm the completeness and accuracy of the invoice record itself. In practice: the XML file, the electronic confirmations from the providers and the FTA, the UUID, and the transmission and receipt log. You do not need to archive every email in which you negotiated the price.
What to write into the provider contract
- Retention period: at least 5 years (7 if you are in real estate), extended automatically at your request during an audit. Many providers sell "archiving" as a separate paid tier — know the cost of year six before you sign.
- Export on exit: your right to download all invoices and confirmations in their original XML within a set period on termination, at no charge. Whoever withholds this blocks your move to another provider.
- Data location: have the hosting location of your primary and backup copies, and the cloud vendor, written down. Outside the UAE is allowed under the conditions above, but you must know.
- Retrieval time: "promptly upon request" in the guidelines; make it hours, not days, in the contract.