Your URA income tax return is due 31 December: a checklist

The Uganda Revenue Authority's rule for annual returns is simple: the income tax return is due within six months of the end of your financial period. For the many businesses whose year ended on 30 June 2026, the deadline is 31 December 2026. It falls in the busiest trading fortnight of the year, which is why October is the month to start.

Who has to file

URA says filing is required of all persons with income above UGX 2,820,000 a year, except employees whose only income is employment income from a single employer. A sole trader, a partnership and a company all file; a shop owner who also draws a salary from someone else still files for the shop.

What the return needs from your books

A final income tax return is built from a full year of records. Before anyone logs in to the portal you want:

• A profit and loss account for 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026.
• A balance sheet at 30 June 2026, including stock on hand at cost.
• A fixed asset list with purchases and disposals in the year.
• Bank and mobile money statements reconciled to the ledger.
• Supplier and customer balances at year end.

If you are VAT registered, every sale should carry a fiscal document number generated from EFRIS, and your VAT returns for the year should already include every sale and purchase, taxable and exempt. The income tax return should agree with those monthly figures; a gap between annual turnover and twelve VAT returns is the first thing an assessor checks.

Purchases without e-invoices may be disallowed

URA's EFRIS page states that it rejects expense deductions and VAT input credits on purchases from designated suppliers that lack a supporting e-invoice or e-receipt. Designated suppliers include every VAT-registered business and businesses in twelve gazetted sectors such as manufacturing, construction, accommodation and food service, and wholesale and retail of fuel. Go through your largest expense lines now and check that the supplier invoices carry an FDN. Where one is missing, ask the supplier for the fiscalised document before December.

Penalties and extensions

Filing late costs UGX 200,000 or two percent of the tax liability for the period, whichever is higher, and URA may also raise an administrative assessment of its own, which is rarely in the taxpayer's favour. You can ask for an extension, but URA caps extensions at an aggregate of 90 days and an extension to file does not move the date the tax itself must be paid.

Two changes from the 2026 Acts to note

The tax amendment Acts that took effect on 1 July 2026 do not change the December deadline, but two measures affect the year ahead and are worth planning for while you have the books open. The VAT registration threshold has doubled from UGX 150 million to UGX 300 million of annual turnover, so a business that crossed UGX 150 million last year but stays below UGX 300 million may no longer be obliged to register. And the definition of royalty now expressly includes software, so payments to non-resident software vendors attract withholding tax; if you pay for foreign subscriptions, ask your accountant how to treat them.

A month-by-month plan

• October: reconcile bank and mobile money to the ledger; chase missing supplier e-invoices; count and value stock if you did not do so on 30 June.
• November: send the trial balance, asset list and reconciliations to your accountant; agree the depreciation and any adjustments.
• First half of December: review the draft return against the twelve VAT returns and the PAYE filings; pay any balance due.
• Before 31 December: file, download the acknowledgement, and keep it with the year's records.

The business that files on 20 December with clean numbers spends Christmas week selling. The one that starts on 28 December spends it looking for receipts.

Sources

1. https://ura.go.ug/en/domestic-taxes/returns/
2. https://ura.go.ug/en/domestic-taxes/efris/
3. https://www.ey.com/en_gl/technical/tax-alerts/uganda-issues-tax-amendment-acts-for-2026