UAE VAT Query Helper

UAE VAT Query Helper is a Claude skill for the questions small businesses ask every week: is this 5%, zero-rated or exempt, what must be on my tax invoice, which VAT 201 box does this go in, do I need to register. It does not answer them with a verdict. It prepares you to get a good answer from your accountant or the FTA, and it is honest about what it does not know.

Every statement it makes carries one of four labels: STATED IN SOURCE, LEANS, DEPENDS or OUTSIDE MY FACTS. The facts it treats as stated come from a dated facts file inside the pack (checked 8 November 2026), each with the official page named: registration thresholds, the 5% rate, the 28th-day return deadline, the 14-day tax invoice rule, advance payments, the domestic reverse charge categories, the penalty regime change, and the e-invoicing decisions and timetable as published. Everything outside that file is labelled as outside it.

What is inside:

• SKILL.md (239 lines) with the intake questions, the workflow, the output format (the VAT Query Brief) and the failure cases.
• A facts file with sources, and a list of topics that are always sent to your accountant (free zones, real estate, partial exemption and others).
• A classification ladder: is VAT in play, which bucket on the output side, can input VAT be recovered.
• A tax invoice field checklist that keeps verified items apart from items you must verify on the FTA page, plus arithmetic checks.
• A VAT 201 box map with a row-by-row method, using Zeyto tax codes as one example.
• A template and a filled sample for the question you send your accountant.
• Three worked examples: a service to a customer in Oman, a pasted invoice check, and a deposit plus a registration threshold question.

How it runs: you paste your question and facts, Claude asks up to ten intake questions, restates your facts and assumptions, runs the ladder, says which way the facts lean and what would change the answer, names the page to check, and writes the email to your accountant.

What it does not do: it never gives a final tax position, never says an invoice is compliant, never quotes penalty amounts, does not look up current law, does not file or log in to anything, and does not cover corporate tax. E-invoicing is described as being phased in, never as ready. The facts file will age, so the pack explains how to update it.

Works in Claude with Skills support, or in any Claude chat by pasting SKILL.md and the facts file. Single business use licence.