If you are VAT-registered in the UAE, say clearly whether your published prices include the 5% VAT and put your TRN on invoices. There is no general legal requirement to display a trade licence number on a website, though some regulated activities and e-commerce payment providers ask for company details.
Two separate things get bundled together here: what tax law requires on an invoice, and what a website should say so that customers are not surprised. They have different answers.
Do published prices have to include VAT?
UAE VAT is 5%. The general expectation for advertised prices to consumers is that they are shown inclusive of tax, so the figure a customer sees is the figure they pay. Business-to-business pricing is more often quoted exclusive, with the tax added on the invoice.
Whichever you do, say which it is, in words, next to the price. "All prices include 5% VAT" or "Prices exclude 5% VAT" removes the entire category of argument that starts at the invoice.
What is a TRN and where does it go?
A Tax Registration Number is issued when a business registers for VAT. It belongs on tax invoices, which have their own required contents under the VAT rules — supplier name and address, TRN, invoice date, a description of what was supplied, the amount and the tax charged.
Putting the TRN in the website footer is optional. Some businesses do it for reassurance, particularly when selling to other businesses. It is not a substitute for having it on the invoice, which is where it is actually required.
Is a licence number required on the site?
Not as a general rule for a normal service business. Specific regulated activities are a different matter and do carry display obligations — health, legal, financial and recruitment services among them — and those come from the relevant regulator rather than from any website rule.
If you take card payments online, your payment provider will usually ask you to publish company details, contact information, and refund and delivery terms. That is a requirement of the provider’s onboarding, and it is worth reading before you build the pages, because it dictates which ones you need.
What about selling to customers outside the UAE?
Exported services can be treated differently under UAE VAT rules, and the conditions are specific. This is genuinely a question for an accountant: getting it wrong in either direction is expensive, and a website is not the place to make the determination.
What the website can do is avoid claiming a treatment it cannot stand behind. "VAT is applied where it applies, and shown on every invoice" is accurate. A confident sentence about zero-rating written by a web developer is not.
A short checklist
- Prices
- Say inclusive or exclusive
- VAT rate
- 5%, stated in words
- TRN
- On invoices; optional on the site
- Licence number
- Optional unless your regulator says otherwise
- Refund and terms pages
- Required by most payment providers
- Contact details
- A real email address, reachable
This is a summary written for orientation, not tax advice. Confirm your own position with a UAE-registered tax adviser before publishing anything definitive about your tax treatment.
Questions people actually ask
- Do I have to register for VAT?
- Registration becomes mandatory once taxable turnover passes the threshold set by the Federal Tax Authority, and voluntary registration is possible below it. Your accountant will know which side of it you are on.
- Can I show prices in dollars if I am in the UAE?
- Yes, and it makes sense if you sell abroad. Show dirhams as well so a UAE customer is not doing conversion arithmetic, and be clear which currency you will actually invoice in.
- Should the website say the company is licensed?
- You can say the business is licensed in the UAE without publishing the number. That gets the reassurance without putting a document reference on a public page.