Landed cost, duty, FX and customs VAT, on every shipment.
Trading businesses make money on margin and lose it on the details: duty, freight, currency, and VAT that was paid at the border and never reclaimed. We track every shipment to landed cost and every border to the right tax treatment.
Four mistakes we fix in the first month.
Import VAT paid and forgotten
UK postponed accounting and UAE reverse charge on imports avoid the cash cost, but only if the ledger is set up for them.
Landed cost unknown
Product cost plus freight plus duty plus insurance, allocated by shipment. Without it, pricing is guesswork.
FX gains and losses in the wrong place
Buying in dollars, selling in pounds and dirhams. Realised and unrealised differences must be tracked or margin is misstated.
Free-zone status put at risk
A UAE free-zone trading company selling to mainland customers can lose its 0 percent rate. The threshold has to be monitored.
Built for the sector, not adapted to it.
- Landed cost by shipment and SKU, with duty and freight allocated
- Import VAT: postponed accounting in the UK, reverse charge in the UAE, customs bonds in the US
- Multi-currency ledgers with realised and unrealised FX reported separately
- Free-zone qualifying-income monitoring for UAE trading companies
- Letters of credit, trade finance and supplier deposits tracked to the balance sheet
- Stock valuation and slow-moving stock provisioning
Usually these.
In roughly this order of importance for import, export & trading.
Bookkeeping
Reconciled monthly on Xero or QuickBooks, so the numbers are real before you look at them.
VAT Returns & Compliance
UK and UAE VAT registration, returns and scheme selection, filed digitally and on time.
UAE Corporate Tax
Registration, free-zone qualification, transfer pricing files and the annual return under the 2023 regime.
International Tax & Transfer Pricing
Structuring across the UK, UAE and US, transfer pricing documentation, permanent establishment and double tax relief.
Management Accounts & Reporting
Monthly P&L, balance sheet and cash with commentary you can act on, not a PDF you file away.
Cash Flow Forecasting & Budgeting
13-week cash forecasts and annual budgets that tell you the runway before the bank does.
How do you handle import VAT in the UK?
Through postponed VAT accounting: the import VAT is declared and reclaimed on the same return, so no cash leaves the business. We set the ledger and the customs declarations up so the monthly statement reconciles.
Can a Dubai free-zone company trade with UK and US customers and keep 0 percent?
Exports out of the UAE are generally qualifying income. Sales to UAE mainland customers are generally not, subject to the de minimis. We monitor the mix monthly so the year-end classification holds.
Talk to someone who has done import & export books before.
Thirty minutes, no pitch deck. Tell us the entities and the countries, and we will tell you honestly what applies and what it costs.