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Complete Curriculum · ~50 Lessons

HIBR ERP Academy curriculum

Every lesson in every track, with cited UAE law references and runtime estimates. The full body of knowledge a competent UAE finance professional should have. Free to study from the outlines now; videos publish progressively from Q4 2026 through Q2 2027.

Jump to a track

  1. Track 1 — VAT 201 Foundations (9 lessons)
  2. Track 2 — Corporate Tax Essentials (10 lessons)
  3. Track 3 — E-Invoicing Mandate (8 lessons)
  4. Track 4 — WPS & Payroll Compliance (8 lessons)
  5. Track 5 — Free Zone Tax Strategy (7 lessons)
  6. Track 6 — AI in UAE Finance Operations (8 lessons)
TRACK 01

VAT 201 Foundations

The track every UAE SMB needs first. Builds from the underlying logic of Federal Decree-Law 8/2017 to the practical filing flow on the FTA's EmaraTax portal. Every box on Form VAT 201 explained.

9 lessons ~120 min runtime For: SMB owners + finance Drops: Q4 2026
1

What VAT actually is, and why the UAE has it

The economic logic behind a 5% VAT, how it differs from sales tax, and why the UAE picked 5% in 2018. The shape that makes everything else make sense.

FDL 8/2017 · Article 2
12 min
2

Who registers, who does not, when registration is mandatory

The 375,000 mandatory threshold, the 187,500 voluntary threshold, and the 30-day window. What happens if you operate above the threshold without registering.

FDL 8/2017 · Article 13 · Cabinet Decision 52/2017
10 min
3

The five VAT treatments — standard, zero, exempt, out-of-scope, reverse charge

How to classify any UAE transaction into one of the five buckets. The most important mental model in UAE VAT.

FDL 8/2017 · Articles 30-50
14 min
4

Tax invoices — what FTA Article 65 actually requires

Every mandatory field on a UAE tax invoice. Bilingual EN+AR requirements. Why the simplified tax invoice exists and when it's legal to issue one.

FDL 8/2017 · Article 65 · Cabinet Decision 52/2017
11 min
5

Reverse charge — the import surprise that catches everyone

When importing goods or services from abroad triggers a self-account on Box 3 and Box 10. The phantom-journal pattern most accounting software gets wrong.

FDL 8/2017 · Articles 48-50
13 min
6

Walking the VAT 201 form — every box explained

From Box 1 standard-rated supplies through Box 10 reverse-charge recovery. What goes where, why, and the consequence of getting it wrong.

FDL 8/2017 · Article 67 · FTA Public Clarification VAT P028
15 min
7

Designated Zones — the special VAT geography

What Article 51 designated zones are, how they differ from Free Zones, the goods-vs-services distinction, and the documentation that supports zero-rating.

FDL 8/2017 · Article 51 · Cabinet Decision 59/2017
13 min
8

Filing on EmaraTax, step-by-step

The actual click-by-click flow on FTA's portal. Saving drafts, attaching evidence, paying via EmaraTax, getting the receipt. What to do if a submission fails.

FTA EmaraTax user manual v3.2
14 min
9

Common mistakes and the penalty regime

The ten errors that account for ~80% of FTA penalties. Late filing 1,000+, late payment 2-4%/month, and the path to penalty waivers under Federal Decree-Law 30/2021.

FDL 30/2021 · Cabinet Decision 49/2021
12 min
TRACK 02

Corporate Tax Essentials

Federal Decree-Law 47/2022 walked end-to-end. From "who has to file" through SBR election, QFZP rules for Free Zone entities, transfer pricing thresholds, and the CT-201 filing flow.

10 lessons ~140 min runtime For: SMB owners + finance Drops: Q4 2026
1

The UAE Corporate Tax story — why, when, and what it taxes

Federal Decree-Law 47/2022 in context. The 0%/9%/15% rate structure and what it actually means for a UAE business.

FDL 47/2022 · Article 3
12 min
2

Who must file — the scope question

Resident companies, foreign companies with PE, natural persons over 1M turnover, exempt persons. The four categories explained.

FDL 47/2022 · Articles 4-5 · Cabinet Decision 49/2023
13 min
3

From accounting profit to taxable income

The adjustments that turn your P&L into a CT return. Non-deductible expenses, exempt income (Article 22), tax depreciation differences, interest limitation.

FDL 47/2022 · Articles 20-31
15 min
4

Small Business Relief (SBR) — the 3M election

Article 21 election lets qualifying SMBs declare zero taxable income. Eligibility conditions, the trap of stacking with QFZP, the 31 December 2026 sunset.

FDL 47/2022 · Article 21 · Ministerial Decision 73/2023
14 min
5

Free Zone Persons and QFZP basics

How a Free Zone Person pays Corporate Tax. Article 18 default, the QFZP path, and why the elections matter. Brief intro — Track 5 goes deep.

FDL 47/2022 · Articles 18-19 · Cabinet Decision 100/2023
14 min
6

Transfer pricing for UAE SMBs

When TP applies, the arm's length principle, the 40M and 200M documentation thresholds. What an SMB needs to actually maintain.

FDL 47/2022 · Articles 34-36 · Ministerial Decision 97/2023
13 min
7

Tax Groups and tax losses

When forming a Tax Group makes sense, the conditions, the consequences. Carrying losses forward and using them against future taxable income.

FDL 47/2022 · Articles 40-41, Articles 37-39
13 min
8

The CT-201 form on EmaraTax

Walking the actual return. Which sections apply, attachments needed (audited statements for some), the 9-month-after-period-end deadline, payment.

FDL 47/2022 · Article 51 · FTA Decision 75/2023
14 min
9

Pillar Two and the 15% rate — does it apply to me?

OECD Pillar Two implementation via Cabinet Decision 142/2024. Who actually hits the 15% effective rate vs the standard 9%.

Cabinet Decision 142/2024
14 min
10

Year 1 mistakes and how to avoid them

The six errors that cost first-time UAE CT filers the most. Late registration, misuse of SBR, optimistic QFZP claims, missing TP documentation.

FDL 47/2022 · Article 56 (record retention 7 years)
12 min
TRACK 03

E-Invoicing Mandate

The July 2026 UAE PEPPOL PINT-AE mandate under Cabinet Decision 28/2024. How the five-corner model works, choosing an Accredited Service Provider, mapping invoice fields, and operating under the mandate without breaking your workflow.

8 lessons ~100 min runtime For: Finance + IT Drops: Q1 2027
1

Why the UAE mandated e-invoicing

Tax-gap economics, fraud-reduction, real-time visibility for FTA. The four-year journey from announcement to mandate.

Cabinet Decision 28/2024 · MoF strategy paper
11 min
2

PEPPOL PINT-AE — the format explained

What PEPPOL is, why the UAE chose it, what makes PINT-AE different from PINT-SA or PINT-MY. The structural fields.

PEPPOL BIS Billing 3.0 · PINT-AE specification
14 min
3

The five-corner model

Sender → sender ASP → PEPPOL network → receiver ASP → receiver. What happens in each corner and where things go wrong.

PEPPOL Authority Agreement v3
13 min
4

Choosing an Accredited Service Provider (ASP)

What to look for: pricing model, integration depth, customer support locality, SLAs, retention guarantees. The active UAE ASP shortlist.

FTA Decision 2/2024
12 min
5

Mapping your invoice fields to PINT-AE

Field-by-field translation from a typical UAE tax invoice to the PINT-AE XML schema. Edge cases: VAT-exempt lines, multi-currency, attachments.

PINT-AE schema v1.0
14 min
6

Phase 1 readiness — the six-step plan

What an SMB should be doing right now to be live before 1 July 2026. ASP onboarding, sandbox testing, parallel running, customer comms.

FTA Implementation Roadmap 2024-2026
12 min
7

Phase 2 — B2C and what's next

The expected 2027-2028 expansion to B2C transactions, likely cash-register-based. What an SMB should plan for now.

Cabinet Decision 28/2024 Article 7
11 min
8

Operating under the mandate

Daily flow once mandate is live. Failed transmissions, retries, error codes, dispute handling, archive obligations (7-year retention).

Cabinet Decision 28/2024 Articles 5-6
13 min
TRACK 04

WPS & Payroll Compliance

UAE Wage Protection System and end-to-end payroll compliance per Federal Decree-Law 33/2021 and Ministerial Decree 43/2022. SIF format, deduction cap, gratuity, MOHRE inspections.

8 lessons ~110 min runtime For: HR + finance Drops: Q1 2027
1

Why WPS exists and what it actually requires

Wage protection as social policy. The MOHRE-Central Bank-bank-employer chain. What "compliance" means in practice.

FDL 33/2021 Article 22 · Ministerial Decree 43/2022
12 min
2

The SIF file — EDR + SCR explained

The actual file format the bank wants. Employer Detail Record, Salary Card Record, the pipe-delimited structure. Why this format and not CSV.

MOHRE WPS Agent Bank Manual v3.2
15 min
3

The 50% deduction cap (Article 22)

What can be deducted, what cannot, what the exceptions are. The case law from MOHRE inspections that defined the boundaries.

FDL 33/2021 Article 22
13 min
4

End-of-service gratuity (Article 51)

The 21-day + 30-day formula. Limited vs unlimited contracts. Resignation reductions per Cabinet Decision 1/2022. Article 44 disciplinary cases.

FDL 33/2021 Article 51 · Cabinet Decision 1/2022 Article 31
15 min
5

SIF rejection codes — the three that account for 80%

Code 304 IBAN, Code 207 deduction cap, Code 119 period. Why these happen and how to prevent them at source.

UAE Central Bank Circular 4/2023
12 min
6

MOHRE inspections — what to expect

Triggers, what an inspector looks at, the documents required, the penalty regime. How to be ready for a no-notice inspection.

MOHRE Inspection Manual 2024
14 min
7

Emirates ID and visa expiry tracking

The compliance overhead nobody talks about. Renewal cadence, the consequences of working with an expired EID, automation patterns.

Federal Decree-Law 6/2022 · MOHRE Circular 8/2024
12 min
8

Domestic vs international payroll

If you have employees in other GCC countries. Cross-border payroll, double-taxation considerations, residency rules.

MOHRE Cross-Border Employment Guidance
13 min
TRACK 05

Free Zone Tax Strategy

Qualifying Free Zone Person status under Cabinet Decision 100/2023. The five qualification tests, qualifying activities, the de minimis cliff edge, substance requirements, and the patterns that lose 0% status.

7 lessons ~95 min runtime For: Free Zone entities Drops: Q2 2027
1

What QFZP actually is, and why the rules are this strict

The economic logic behind a 0% rate for some Free Zone income but not others. The OECD BEPS pressure that shaped the rules.

FDL 47/2022 Article 18 · Cabinet Decision 100/2023
12 min
2

The five QFZP qualification tests

Substance, qualifying income, election, transfer pricing, audited financials. All five must pass — binary, not graded.

Cabinet Decision 100/2023 Articles 3-7
14 min
3

The Qualifying Activities list

The 13 activities in Ministerial Decision 265/2023. What each means, the documentation that supports it, the activities most Free Zone businesses think apply but actually don't.

Ministerial Decision 265/2023 Article 2
15 min
4

The de minimis cliff edge

5% of revenue or 5 million — whichever is lower. Why this single rule kills more QFZP status than any other condition. Live tracking patterns.

Cabinet Decision 100/2023 Article 4 · Ministerial Decision 265/2023 Article 4
14 min
5

Substance — what "adequate" really means

Premises, employees, expenditure scaled to revenue. The outsourcing carve-out and its limits. What MOHRE inspections look for.

Cabinet Decision 100/2023 Article 7
13 min
6

Designated Zones vs Free Zones — don't confuse them

The VAT designation under Article 51 vs the Free Zone status for Corporate Tax. Why a Free Zone might be one but not the other.

FDL 8/2017 Article 51 · FDL 47/2022 Article 18
13 min
7

Four pitfalls that lose 0% for an entire period

The mainland-customer trap, the home-office trap, the passive holding trap, the no-audit trap. Real cases anonymized.

FTA QFZP enforcement guidance
14 min
TRACK 06

AI in UAE Finance Operations

How AI actually helps a UAE SMB finance function. What works (transaction categorization, receipt OCR, bilingual customer service). What doesn't (autonomous tax filing — the law requires human approval). Where AI is still a copilot, not a pilot.

8 lessons ~105 min runtime For: Operators + finance Drops: Q2 2027
1

What AI in finance actually is in 2026

Beyond the hype. Where current LLMs (Claude, GPT, Gemini) are reliable and where they are not. The cost-quality-latency triangle.

Anthropic + OpenAI public guidance
12 min
2

Transaction categorization done right

How an AI categorizer learns your chart of accounts. The 95% accuracy bar. The 5% that needs human review and why that's still 20× faster than manual.

HIBR AI Layer technical brief
13 min
3

Arabic receipt OCR — the hard problem

Why Arabic OCR is genuinely harder than English. Right-to-left, mixed-script receipts, handwritten numerals. The current state of accuracy.

Claude Vision + custom UAE receipt training
13 min
4

Bilingual customer service on WhatsApp

How a UAE SMB can run AI-first customer service in Arabic + English. The handoff patterns. What never to let AI decide.

WhatsApp Business API + LLM patterns
14 min
5

VAT 201 AI assistance — copilot, not pilot

How AI can prepare a 95%-ready VAT 201 from your ledger. Why FTA filings always require human approval. Where AI saves hours, where it cannot replace judgment.

FTA Decision 75/2023 · HIBR product spec
13 min
6

Chargeback defense as an AI workflow

The tool-using AI agent pattern. Pulling evidence from ledger, scoring win-probability, submitting via processor API. UAE chargeback economics.

Telr + PayTabs + Network International chargeback APIs
14 min
7

Privacy and PDPL when using AI

How to use AI tools without breaking Federal Decree-Law 45/2021. The redaction-before-inference pattern. Vendor DPAs that matter.

FDL 45/2021 Articles 5, 20, 22
13 min
8

Where AI is going — agentic workflows in 2027+

The MCP (Model Context Protocol) standard. AI agents that actually do work end-to-end. What this means for UAE SMB finance teams. What to prepare for.

Anthropic MCP specification
13 min

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