The United Arab Emirates: 5% duty, 5% VAT, and why that is 10.25%

What this page is, and what it is not

This is the tax and duty position for Kenyan cut flowers entering the United Arab Emirates, read from Dubai Customs' own tariff file and from the VAT Decree-Law itself. The plant health position is partial, and deliberately so: the authority, the quarantine network and the point of inspection are established, but whether a cut flower consignment requires an import permit is not — and that gap is stated below rather than filled with something plausible.

Two fives do not make ten

This is the whole point of the page, and it is the same trap as Saudi Arabia.

The duty is 5%. Every line in Chapter 06.03 carries it — roses, carnations, orchids, chrysanthemums, lilies, other fresh cut flowers, and the dried and dyed lines. There is no zero-rated cut flower line. The UAE Government describes the Dubai tariff as "5 per cent of the value CIF (Cost Freight Insurance) value except for alcohol and cigarettes".

The VAT is also 5%. Article 3 of the Decree-Law sets the standard rate levied on "any supply or importation".

But VAT is not charged on the same number the duty was charged on. Article 35 defines importation value as:

"The value of the goods for the customs purposes in accordance with the Customs Legislation, including the value of insurance, freight, any customs duties and any excise taxes to be paid on the importation of goods."

The duty is inside the VAT base. So:

10.25%, not 10%. It is a quarter of a percentage point, which sounds like nothing and is not nothing across a season's volume — and more importantly, a landed-cost model that adds the two rates is wrong in a way that will not show up until the invoice arrives.

Saudi Arabia does the same thing on bigger numbers, where 5% duty and 15% VAT compound to 20.75%. How border charges behave generally, and which ones rise with your specification, is set out here.

Where the duty figure comes from, and how it was checked

Dubai Customs publishes an HS Code Master alongside its Integrated Customs Tariff page. It is described as a correlation table between 8-digit and 12-digit codes — and it carries a duty percentage against every code.

We did not take the cut-flower reading on trust. A file that returned 5% for everything would look identical, so the same method was run against lines whose rates the UAE Government states independently: whisky reads 50%, matching the Government's "50 per cent duty is payable for alcohol"; rice reads 0%, consistent with its statement that tariffs "range from 0 to 5 per cent". Varying output that matches the official description is a reading. Uniform output would have been an artefact.

When the tax is actually paid

Two provisions of the Executive Regulation decide the timing, and they matter to a perishable consignment.

If the importer is not registered for tax, the tax is paid before the goods may be released, and the Regulation directs that customs departments cooperate with the Federal Tax Authority to ensure payable tax on import has been settled before release. A payment question is therefore a clearance question, on a product measured in days.

If the importer is registered, the Regulation provides for the reverse charge mechanism on import. Whether it applies to your entry is a matter for your tax adviser, and this page does not tell you that it does.

And some goods are not treated as imported at all — those under customs duty suspension (temporary admission, customs warehousing, transit, or goods intended for re-export by the same person, subject to a guarantee or deposit), and goods entering a Designated Zone from outside the State. If your route uses one of those, the position above is not your position.

Plant health: what is established, and the question the scope leaves open

The authority is the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment, and it runs a network of agricultural and veterinary quarantine centres at the entry points. Its published list of service channels includes a Dubai Flower Center for Agricultural Quarantine — alongside Al Maktoum Airport, Zayed International Airport, Sharjah Airport, Jebel Ali Port and Khalifa Port among others. A dedicated flower quarantine centre is a useful thing to know exists.

Inspection happens on arrival. The Ministry states that agricultural consignments are inspected upon their arrival at the entry point, and released once it is satisfied they comply with import requirements. There is no pre-notification step of the kind Great Britain operates, at least none that we have found.

And here is what we are not going to tell you. The Ministry publishes a service called Import an agricultural consignment, with a permit valid six months from issue, a five working day service time, and published fees. Its stated scope is seeds and tubers, seedlings, plants, palm seedlings and honey bees — and its fee lines name seeds, seedlings, external plants, cuttings, honey bees and beneficial organisms. Cut flowers are named in none of them.

So we do not know whether a cut flower consignment needs that permit, and we are not going to quote you its fees as though it did. A cut flower is a plant product rather than a plant for planting, and regimes routinely treat the two differently — Great Britain's does. We found no separate inbound cut flower service either. This is a question for your customs broker or for the Ministry directly, and it is the one thing that would complete this page.

What this page does not tell you

• Whether cut flowers need an import permit. The Ministry publishes a permit service for agricultural consignments, but its scope names seeds, seedlings, plants, palm seedlings and honey bees, not cut flowers. We will not quote its fees or its validity as though they applied. This is the gap that stops this page being complete.
• How often consignments are inspected. No published rate for Kenyan cut flowers was located, and we will not borrow one from Great Britain.
• What any of it costs delivered. Duty and VAT are calculable in advance. Freight is not published, and neither is a landed cost.

What to ask

• Is the landed model adding 5% and 5%, or compounding them? If it adds, it is understating by a quarter of a point.
• Who is the importer of record, and are they registered for tax? That decides whether tax is paid before release or accounted under reverse charge.
• Is any part of the route using a Designated Zone or a duty-suspension arrangement? If so, the import has not happened where you think it has.
• What are the plant health requirements, and who has confirmed them? We have not, and we say so.