I trade virtual assets as a business — what's the actual tax position?

For VAT, amendments effective from 15 November 2024 classified the transfer and exchange of virtual assets (cryptocurrencies and similar) as an exempt financial service, with retroactive effect reaching back several years. Managing and safeguarding virtual assets for someone else (custody), though, stays exempt only when it isn't provided for an explicit fee or commission; if a separate fee is charged for that service, it may be standard-rated at 5% instead.

On Corporate Tax, there's no special carve-out for virtual assets: once trading turns into an organised business activity carried out by a legal entity (rather than simple individual investment), the profit falls under the normal 9% regime above the AED 375,000 threshold. A few points are genuinely not settled in official guidance yet — the tax treatment of mining itself, and how far active virtual-asset trading affects a Free Zone entity's Qualifying Free Zone Person status. This area is moving fast, and RASEEKH tracks official updates and reviews your specific position before any decision gets made.