The UAE charges VAT at 5 percent, which is low by global standards, and visitors can reclaim most of it on goods they take home. The scheme is real, it is government run, and it is genuinely worth using on a serious shopping trip. It is also the step most travellers manage to fumble, almost always in the same way: they check their bags in first and then go looking for the refund desk. This guide covers who qualifies, what counts, and how to get through the airport part without losing the money.
Who runs the scheme and who qualifies
The tourist refund scheme is administered by Planet on behalf of the Federal Tax Authority, the UAE’s tax regulator. Planet operates the tagging system in shops, the validation kiosks and the payouts, but the rules themselves come from the FTA, and tax.gov.ae is the only source worth trusting when a figure is disputed.
Eligibility is about residency rather than nationality, and it is worth stating that plainly because so much of the advice online implies otherwise. You qualify if you are aged 18 or over, are not resident in the UAE, and are not crew on a flight or ship leaving the country. Whether you hold a British, Indian, German, Australian, Singaporean or any other passport makes no difference at all to your entitlement. A UAE resident does not qualify regardless of which passport they hold. Your passport is simply the identity document the system records the export against.
The minimum spend and the no-combining rule
The threshold is a tax inclusive purchase of AED 250 from a single participating retailer. Receipts from different shops cannot be added together to reach it, which is the rule most people discover too late.
Two practical consequences follow. If you are buying several things in one mall, concentrating the spend in one store rather than spreading it thinly across four will often be the difference between a claim and no claim. And you must ask for the tax free tag at the till, at the time of purchase, presenting your passport. Retailers registered with the scheme display Planet signage, but not every shop participates, so it is a question worth asking before you pay rather than after. Our guide to Dubai’s shopping malls covers where the participating retailers are concentrated.
What you get back, and what the operator keeps
You do not receive the full 5 percent. Two deductions apply: an administrative fee charged as a percentage of the VAT amount, and a small fixed fee per claim. The fixed fee was reduced by Federal Tax Authority decision in mid 2026 while the percentage fee stayed as it was, so the net effect for travellers improved slightly.
The result is that you recover the large majority of the VAT you paid rather than all of it. I am deliberately not printing the exact percentages here as authoritative figures, because they are set by FTA decision, have already been amended once recently, and can change again with little public notice. The current numbers are published on the tourist refund page at tax.gov.ae and on Planet’s own site, and those are the two places to check. What is stable is the shape of the deal: a small fixed charge plus a percentage of the VAT, taken automatically from the refund.
Basing yourself near the malls saves the shuttlingCompare Downtown and Marina hotels within reach of Dubai's main shopping districtsWhat actually qualifies
The principle is straightforward: the scheme refunds VAT on goods you export, not on anything you consume in the UAE.
Excluded outright are services of every kind. Hotel nights, restaurant meals, desert safaris, spa treatments, attraction tickets, car hire and taxis are all outside the scheme, and no amount of paperwork changes that. Food and drink qualify only if they are still sealed and unconsumed when you present them at validation. Goods that have been visibly used before departure can be rejected, so a purchase you intend to claim on is better kept in its packaging until you are home.
Clothing, electronics, jewellery, watches, cosmetics, luggage and homeware are all standard qualifying categories, and they cover most of what visitors buy here anyway.
The airport step, in the right order
This is where refunds are lost, and the sequence matters more than anything else in this article.
Validate before you check in. The kiosk may ask to inspect the goods, and that is impossible once your suitcase has gone down the belt. Go to the Planet kiosks or counters in the departures hall first, complete the validation, then check in.
You will need your passport, the tagged receipts, the goods themselves and the card you want the refund paid to. The process is digital and quick once you are at the machine, but queues build at peak departure times, so treat it as an extra step in your airport timings rather than something to squeeze in. If you are working out how long the whole journey takes, our Dubai airport transfer guide covers getting there in the first place.
Refunds can be paid back to a card or taken in cash, with cash subject to a cap per traveller across a rolling period. Card refunds typically take a few working days to appear.
Claiming early, in the malls
You do not have to leave all of this to the airport. Planet operates validation points in a number of shopping malls and hotels across Dubai, and using one of them clears the paperwork ahead of your departure day. The catch is that these locations generally require a boarding pass or confirmed departure within a short window before your flight, so they suit the day before or the morning of travel rather than mid holiday.
The 90 day export window also applies: goods must leave the UAE within 90 days of the purchase date on the receipt. On a normal holiday this is a non issue, but it does mean a purchase from a previous trip cannot be claimed on this one.
None of this is complicated once the order of operations is clear. Ask for the tag at the till, keep the goods accessible, validate before check in. If you are still assembling the broader trip plan, our first time guide to Dubai covers the rest, and for the current fees and thresholds, tax.gov.ae is the page to open before you go.
