Why FTA Submissions Are in Arabic — and What That Means for Your Request

Formal submissions to the Federal Tax Authority — reconsideration requests and their supporting narratives — must be in Arabic. For many businesses run day-to-day in English, this single requirement shapes the entire process more than any other rule.

What the requirement means in practice

Your reconsideration request is not a form with checkboxes. It's a reasoned document: who you are, what decision you're challenging, a chronology of facts, grounds, evidence, and a formal request. All of that has to stand up as an Arabic document — read by a reviewer at the Authority in Arabic, not in your English original.

That has three practical consequences:

1. The Arabic version is the submission. Any English version exists for your records and your review — useful, but not what the FTA reads.
2. Machine translation is a risk, not a shortcut. Formal Arabic has registers and conventions; a letter that reads like software output undercuts an otherwise careful case. Whatever tool produces the first draft, a competent human Arabic reader should verify the final text.
3. Time must be budgeted for it. Within the 40-business-day reconsideration window, treating the Arabic draft as a final-day formality is how deadlines get missed. Draft early, review properly.

Understanding what you sign

There's a fairness point here too: you are the one submitting the document, through your own EmaraTax account, in your company's name. You should never submit an Arabic document you haven't been able to read. Whoever prepares your submission should give you a faithful English mirror of the final Arabic text, so you know precisely what you're putting your name to.

That's how we structure every PenaltyDesk package — Arabic submission letter plus an English mirror copy — and it's worth demanding from anyone else you might use, too.

A note on quality

The FTA is known to consider well-documented grounds: genuine misunderstanding of newly introduced regulations, and circumstances beyond the company's control supported by evidence — medical certificates, IT logs, bank records, correspondence. None of that substance changes with language. But substance only counts if it survives the journey into formal Arabic intact: dates exact, names consistent, exhibits referenced correctly.

The submission language rule isn't a trap. It's simply a constraint to plan around — early, and with a qualified human eye on the final text.