Every business in Saudi Arabia works to a schedule of deadlines that repeats with each financial year: VAT returns, the zakat declaration or the income tax declaration, filing financial statements on the Qawaem platform, and then e-invoicing integration obligations. This guide explains each of those deadlines in terms of how it is calculated from your own financial year, and puts a blank template in your hands that you fill in with your own data to produce a calendar specific to your business.
Key points
- Every deadline is calculated from the end of your financial year: 120 days for the zakat or income tax declaration, and six months to file the financial statements.
- The frequency of your VAT return is set by the SAR 40 million threshold: below it, a quarterly return; above it, a monthly return.
- VAT deadlines are the same for everyone: the last day of the month following the tax period, whatever your financial year.
- In mixed-ownership companies: zakat at 2.5% on the Saudi and GCC share, and income tax at 20% on the foreign share.
- Wave 25 of e-invoicing has a date fixed for everyone in scope: integration by 1 February 2027.
Start from a single date: the end of your financial year
Most regulatory deadlines in Saudi Arabia are not fixed calendar dates but periods that begin when your financial year ends. So the first line in your calendar is not a deadline at all: it is your financial year end as recorded in your articles of association and your books, which is 31 December for the majority, and 30 June or 31 March for others. Then add the periods to it: 120 days for the zakat declaration or the income tax declaration, and six months to file the financial statements. VAT returns follow an independent track tied to the tax period assigned to you by the Authority, and the e-invoicing date is a fixed date the Authority sets for each wave.
A newly established business has a first financial year that may run longer or shorter than twelve months, and the periods are calculated from the end of that year rather than from the date of incorporation. The same applies to the transitional period when a financial year end is changed, because the change reorders the entire calendar and deserves updating as soon as it is approved. And do not let the last day of the window be your filing day: file at least one working day before it, because public holidays and platform outages are not resolved at the last minute.
VAT returns: monthly or quarterly?
The matter starts with registration: registration is mandatory once annual taxable supplies exceed SAR 375,000, and voluntary from SAR 187,500, with the rate at 15% since 1 July 2020.
The frequency of the return is set by your annual taxable revenue: a business whose revenue falls below SAR 40 million files a quarterly return, and one that exceeds it files a monthly return. The rule is the same in both cases: the deadline is the last day of the month following the end of the tax period. So the January to March quarter falls due on 30 April, and the month of January falls due on the last day of February. Write out the whole year of deadlines in one sitting, and set an internal reminder ten days before each one to close the books and reconcile output tax against input tax. Details of preparation and filing are on the Value Added Tax page.
The zakat declaration and the income tax declaration: 120 days
The zakat declaration is filed within 120 days of the financial year end, and zakat is calculated at 2.5% of the zakat base for a Hijri financial year, and at approximately 2.578% for a Gregorian one. Zakat applies to Saudi and GCC ownership.
The share owned by non-Saudis and non-GCC nationals is subject to income tax at 20%, and its declaration is likewise due within 120 days of the financial year end. In mixed companies the obligation is divided according to ownership percentages: zakat on the Saudi and GCC share, and income tax on the foreign share. Note that 15% is the Value Added Tax rate and has no bearing on income tax. And count the period in days rather than months, because the difference between the two can run to a full week. Preparation of the declaration sits within the annual cycle covered in our services.
Filing financial statements on Qawaem: six months
Annual financial statements are filed through the Qawaem platform, which belongs to the Saudi Business Center at the Ministry of Commerce, within six months of the financial year end. Since 31/12/2024 filing has been required of every company operating in the Kingdom, not of one specific category of them.
Count the six months from the same date rather than to the end of the month: a business whose year ended on 30 June falls due on 30 December, not on the 31st. This is the furthest deadline in your calendar, which is precisely why it is forgotten more often than the others, so tie it in your mind to the zakat declaration date: a business whose year ended on 31 December files the declaration at the end of April and then files the statements at the end of June. One warning deserves attention here: the penalty may increase by 50% if the violation is repeated in two consecutive financial years. Details of filing are on the Qawaem financial statements page.
E-invoicing: Wave 25 and 1 February 2027
Phase One, covering generation, has been in force since 4 December 2021. Phase Two, covering integration with the Fatoora platform, has been applied in waves since 1 January 2023, and requires invoices in UBL 2.1 format carrying a unique UUID identifier, a cryptographic stamp, a QR code and a hash value.
The deadline for Wave 24, which covered businesses whose revenue exceeded SAR 375,000, ended on 30 June 2026. Wave 25 was announced on 24 July 2026 and covers businesses whose revenue exceeded SAR 187,500 in any of the years 2022, 2023, 2024 or 2025, with an integration deadline of 1 February 2027. That date is fixed for everyone in scope, however much their financial years differ. The Authority notifies a business in scope at least six months in advance, so make monitoring those notifications a recurring item. Technical readiness is covered within our services.
The monthly rhythm that makes deadlines achievable
Deadlines are not missed because someone forgot them, but because the books were not ready when they arrived. A good calendar therefore begins with a simple monthly rhythm: post the entries and archive the documents in the first week of each month, then reconcile the bank accounts and the receivables and payables, then verify that supplier records and their tax numbers are complete before relying on input tax.
This rhythm serves four deadlines at once: it turns the VAT return into an extraction exercise rather than a search, it puts the zakat declaration on closed balances, it leaves the financial statements ready months ahead of their deadline, and it makes any later data request straightforward to answer. The foundation of all of it is regular month-by-month bookkeeping.
Other deadlines that need a line in your calendar
Your calendar is not complete with the deadlines of the Authority and Qawaem alone. There are monthly social insurance contributions, the withholding obligation on payments to non-residents which is tied to the date of payment rather than to the year end, commercial registration and municipal licence renewals, and Ministry of Human Resources obligations tied to your establishment file. Enter them by name in the same calendar, because their absence from it is more dangerous than being late on them.
Then comes a line that the regulations do not set but your own business does: the zakat certificate. It is issued only after obligations have been settled, and in practice it is required in government tenders and contracts, when collecting final payments on contracts, and in a number of licence renewals. So if you expect a tender or a payment in a particular month, work backwards through the calendar and make sure the declarations are filed and the dues paid well before it. And if an examination notice reaches you, that is a deadline with a period stated in the letter itself, read from its first day rather than its last; the steps are on the tax and zakat examination page.
A blank template, then three worked examples
Fill these lines in with your own data: our financial year end: ____ | zakat or income tax declaration (+120 days): ____ | filing the statements (+6 months from the same date): ____ | our tax period, monthly or quarterly: ____ and its deadlines: ____ | e-invoicing, if we fall within Wave 25: 1 February 2027. VAT deadlines are the same for everyone however much your financial year differs: the first quarter falls due on 30 April, the second on 31 July, the third on 31 October, and the fourth on 31 January of the following year.
And here are three examples of it filled in: a year ending 31 December 2026 has its declaration due on 30 April 2027 and its statements on 30 June 2027. A year ending 31 March 2027 has its declaration due on 29 July 2027 and its statements on 30 September 2027. A year ending 30 June 2027 has its declaration due on 28 October 2027 and its statements on 30 December 2027. Note that 120 days does not always equal four months, and the difference arises from the number of days in the months falling between the two dates, so count them in days directly on the calendar.
With this much you can build a complete compliance schedule for your business: put your financial year end at the top, add the periods as they are given here, and update it with every change in the size of revenue or in ownership. And if you would like someone to review the calendar with you before you fix it, or to take on preparation and filing by their deadlines, we would be glad to hear from you through our contact page.