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The Oman compliance calendar — what is due, and when

A single sheet of every deadline we have verified across the other guides on this site, arranged by rhythm rather than by ministry, because that is how you actually plan a year.

Published 2026-08-18 ✓ Figures verified 2026-08-18 19 min read

This page collects every recurring deadline and dated obligation established across the rest of this site and puts them in one place, organised by how often the thing happens rather than by which ministry runs it. The one businesses get wrong most often is the first line on it: wages in Oman are due within three days of the end of the wage period, not on the fifteenth of the month.

3 days
Wages, after the wage period ends
The 15th
Social insurance contributions
The 14th
Withholding tax
60 days
To register for income tax

How to use this page

Every line here is a summary, and it is not the source. The guide linked from each item carries the instrument, the article number and the caveats that go with it, and where this sheet and the guide differ, the guide is right — this page is compressed and the guide is not. Follow the link before you rely on a line for a decision that costs money.

The figures verified date at the top of this page is the date the whole sheet was last checked back against those underlying guides — not the date any single line was first published. We rebuild the page whenever the guides behind it are re-verified. Nothing on it was researched for this page alone: if a figure is not already sourced somewhere else on the site, it is not here. And where Oman publishes no deadline at all, that is recorded as a finding rather than filled in with a plausible number.

Every month

ObligationDeadlineInstrument
Wages, through the Wage Protection SystemWithin 3 days of the end of the wage periodLabour Law Article 90; MD 729/2024
Social insurance contributionsFirst 15 days of the following monthSocial Protection Law Article 58
Withholding tax on payments abroadThe 14th day following the end of the month of payment or creditIncome Tax Law Article 53
Muscat hotels-and-restaurants levy, 5%By the 25th of the monthMuscat Municipality services page
Three days, not the fifteenth

The most common payroll error in Oman is a wage-payment deadline of the fifteenth. That is the UAE pattern. In Oman the fifteenth belongs to the social insurance contributions, not to the salaries.

For a payroll running to the last day of the month, wages must land in the worker's account by the 3rd of the following month. An employer paying on the tenth in good faith, on the strength of a regional template, is a week late every single month.

The withholding tax date is unusually solid by Omani standards: the fourteenth appears identically in Article 53, on the Tax Authority's withholding tax page and in its Income Tax FAQ.

The Muscat levy carries a caveat you should know before you budget for it. Muscat Municipality's own services page lists a monthly hotels-and-restaurants fee of 5%, due by the 25th, alongside 10% for entertainment centres and cinemas. PwC's Worldwide Tax Summaries lists Omani municipal taxes as 3% on property rentals, 5% on hotel occupancy and 10% on leisure and cinema houses — with restaurants not included in the 5%. We could not locate the instrument imposing the levy on either reading, so the sheet carries the Municipality's version and the disagreement with it.

Every quarter

ObligationDeadlineNote
VAT return and paymentWithin 30 days of the end of the calendar quarterArticle 72 of the VAT Law and the Tax Authority's return-filing guide
Tourism tax, 4%Quarterly, to the Ministry of Heritage and TourismPayable by restaurants and hotel establishments; the service requires a tourism licence or a classified-restaurant certificate

Late VAT payment attracts Additional Tax at 1% of the unpaid tax per month or part-month, running from the payment deadline until the tax is actually paid. Where a deadline falls on a weekend or public holiday it moves to the next working day — we have that from PwC rather than from a government page, so treat it as secondary and do not cut it fine.

Corporate tax: the deadline depends on your rate band

FilingDeadlineSource
Return — taxpayers on the 3% rateWithin 3 months of the end of the tax yearTax Authority FAQ, official
Return — taxpayers on the 15% rateWithin 4 months of the end of the tax yearTax Authority FAQ, official
Payment of tax dueWith the return, within 4 months of year endPwC, secondary

The tax year is the calendar year. The split between three and four months is a useful cross-check that the two rate bands are a real distinction rather than a presentational one — see the corporate tax guide for who qualifies for 3%. One thing that is not on this sheet because it does not exist: the top-up tax under Royal Decree 70/2024 has no published filing deadline, no published registration process and no executive regulations, nineteen months after it took effect.

Every year

ObligationWhenWhere it comes from
Omanisation plan, for establishments below their quotaAnnuallyLabour Law Article 19; a plan must also accompany any expatriate recruitment request
Medical examination of personal-care and beauty workers in MuscatAnnuallyMuscat Municipality Decision 219/2019, Articles 18(c) and 22(d)
Municipal licence renewalOne year is the practical maximum; the licence expires with your tenancyMuscat Municipality renewal guidance — no legislation states a validity period
Chamber of Commerce membership renewalIn advance, at the beginning of each fiscal yearOCCI Decision 40/2023, Article 58

The annual Omanisation plan is the mechanism, not the rate. There is no published Omanisation percentage for most sectors — the decision that would contain the table, MD 321/2009, is an image-only scan we could not read a single figure from. What is documented is that establishments which have not met their required quota must file the plan, and that permit fees are reduced by 30% for employers meeting their quota and doubled for those who do not.

Every two or three years

ItemCycleRenewal timing
Tax card2 years, OMR 10Same process as issuance; no published grace period or late surcharge
Work licence — the employer's approval to recruit24 monthsNot renewable
Work-practice licence — the worker's ownUp to 24 monthsRenewable; OMR 10 per month for late renewal
Work visa2 years from stampingOMR 50 per month renewal-delay fine
Resident cardUp to 10 years, at OMR 5 per yearWithin 30 days after expiry
Investor residency10 or 5 yearsRenewed every 3 years, at OMR 500 or OMR 300
Tourism classification certificate3 years, OMR 200 per termAt least 60 days before expiry
Travel and tourism office licence2 years, OMR 75At least 60 days before expiry; late filing costs 10% per month of the fee
Home business register3 years, OMR 3Within the 30 days before expiry

Read the right-hand column carefully, because the renewal windows point in different directions and mixing them up is how people miss them. Some run before expiry — 60 days for the tourism licences, 30 days for the home business register, 15 days for a residence permit. One runs after — 30 days for the resident card. And the municipal licence has a window at both ends: where the licence is active, renewal is not permitted earlier than three months before expiry, so you cannot simply clear it early and forget it.

Deadlines that start with an event, not a date

These are the ones that never appear in a calendar because nothing puts them there. Each runs from something happening — a company starting to trade, a worker arriving, a dismissal being notified — and the clock is usually already running by the time anyone thinks about it.

Tax and workers

TriggerYou haveInstrument
Commencing activity, or registering with MOCIIP60 days to register for income taxTax Authority registration page
Meeting a VAT registration test30 days to applyArticle 110 of the VAT Executive Regulations
Employing a worker30 days to register them with the Social Protection FundArticle 21 of the Executive Regulation
Ending employment30 days to notify the FundArticle 21 of the Executive Regulation
The savings system commencing, for a non-Omani30 days to register them in itArticle 97 of the Executive Regulation

Residence and cards

TriggerYou haveInstrument
Entering Oman for the first time30 days to obtain the resident cardROP first-issuance page — English version only; the Arabic version does not mention it
The resident card expiring30 days after expiry to renewROP Decision 157/2025
A residence permit approaching expiryRequest renewal 15 days before it expiresForeigners' Residence Law, Royal Decree 16/95, Article 14
A contract endingThe employer must repatriate the non-Omani worker within 60 daysLabour Law Article 14; the worker may remain while pursuing dues through the courts

The register, and claims

TriggerYou haveInstrument
Any change to a registered CR particularOne month to register itCommercial Register Law 3/74, Articles 8 and 10
Being notified of a dismissal decision30 days to lodge a complaintLabour Law Article 10
Each right falling dueOne year to claim itLabour Law Article 9 — the year runs per entitlement, not from the end of service
Employment endingDues immediately; within 7 days if the worker resignedLabour Law Article 91
The two labour deadlines that end most claims

30 days from notification of the dismissal decision. Not 30 days from your last working day, and not from when you heard about it informally.

One year from the date each right fell due. The drafting is unusual: the year runs per entitlement, from when each one became payable, not from the end of your service. On a long-running non-payment the older months fall away one by one while you are still employed and still deciding what to do. Waiting until you leave is not a neutral choice.

Dated deadlines coming up

These are one-off dates rather than cycles. The third column is the one to read: some are fixed in a published instrument and you can plan against them, and some are expectations — a deadline a decree imposed on a ministry, or a date an authority has briefed but not gazetted.

DateWhat happensFixed or expected
End of August 2026Fawtara e-invoicing pilot — about 100 taxpayers, voluntaryExpected. Scheduled, and we cannot confirm it has started
27 October 2026Existing tourism licence-holders must have aligned with the new Executive RegulationFixed. Six months from entry into force on 27 April 2026 — see below
Around March 2027Executive regulations of Royal Decree 79/2025 due — real estate registrationExpected. The decree sets one year from entry into force; nothing published yet
1 April 2027E-invoicing mandatory where annual supplies exceed OMR 5 millionFixed. Decision 189/2026, Gazette 1660, 9 August 2026
By 19 July 2027Expatriate savings system must have commenced — 9% of basic wage, employerOuter limit fixed by RD 60/2025; the board decision setting the actual start date is unpublished
1 October 2027E-invoicing mandatory where annual supplies are at or below OMR 5 millionFixed. Same decision
1 January 2028Personal income tax — 5% above OMR 42,000 a yearFixed. Royal Decree 56/2025
19 July 2028Work-injury insurance extends to non-Omanis — 1% employerFixed by RD 60/2025, which extended the deferral from three years to five
The tourism regularisation deadline is 27 October 2026

The new Executive Regulation of the Tourism Law gives anyone already licensed on the date it takes effect six months from that date to bring their operation into line. Its final article sets commencement at the day after publication, and it was published in Official Gazette 1645 on 26 April 2026 — so it took effect on 27 April 2026 and the deadline is 27 October 2026.

A date of 17 October 2026 circulates widely, and it is an error rather than a competing reading. It traces to one secondary source that describes the regulation as having come into force on 17 April 2026, the day after it was issued, instead of the day after it was published. The instrument ties commencement to publication, so nothing supports the earlier date.

As at 18 August 2026 the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism has published no reminder, clarification or extension, and no penalty is attached to the regularisation period itself — after the deadline your exposure is under whichever substantive requirement you are then breaching. Full sourcing is in the travel agency and tourism licence guide.

On the e-invoicing dates, note what changed and what did not. Decision 189/2026 replaced the old four-phase timetable of August 2026, February 2027 and August 2027, and it published a threshold, so phase membership is no longer a selection exercise you cannot predict — work out your annual value of supplies and take your date from it. What sits in the August 2026 slot instead is the voluntary pilot, and that is the one line in this table that is neither fixed nor confirmed: it is scheduled, it is about 100 taxpayers, and it is not a mandate.

What a missed deadline costs

Penalties across the corpus, in one place. Note how many of them are monthly and compounding rather than flat, and how many carry a cap that makes the worst case knowable.

Missed obligationPenaltyCap or note
Municipal licence fee overdue10% of the outstanding fee per month, running after 30 days, doubling each monthCapped at the amount of the original fee — Decision 1/2018, Article 4
Work licence renewal, or registering worker dataOMR 10 per month, calculated from the worker's date of arrivalCapped at OMR 500 per worker — MD 602/2025, Article 10
Failing to regularise a worker's statusOMR 15 per month if the employer is a natural person, OMR 20 if a corporate personAlso capped at OMR 500 per worker — Article 11
Income tax return late or missingOMR 100 to OMR 2,000Plus 1% per month on unpaid tax, which does not stop while an assessment is disputed
VAT paid lateAdditional Tax at 1% of the unpaid tax per month or part-monthRuns from the deadline until the tax is paid
Wages outside the Wage Protection SystemWarning, then suspension of work-permit services, then OMR 50 per affected worker, doubling to OMR 100 on repetitionArticle 147 separately gives OMR 500–1,000, multiplied by the number of workers and doubled on repeat
Work visa renewed lateOMR 50 per monthROP work-visa page
Tourism licence renewal filed late10% per month on the licence feeThe same 10% per month applies to late payment of the tourism fee
Resident card renewed lateOMR 10 per month on the ROP English page; OMR 5 per month on the Arabic oneNeither 2025 decision contains a monthly fee at all — see below
OMR 5 or OMR 10 a month for a late resident card — the ROP contradicts itself

The English version of the ROP resident card page states OMR 6 for one year, OMR 11 for two years, and OMR 10 for each month of delay. The Arabic version of the same page, describing the same service, states رسوم وقدرها (5) عن كل شهر تأخيرOMR 5 per month.

We are not resolving this, because both are official pages and both are stale: they predate ROP Decision 78/2025 and ROP Decision 157/2025, and we read both decisions in full. Neither contains a monthly late fee for the resident card. Both impose the duty to renew within 30 days of expiry and stop there.

So the live instrument is silent, and the two pages that are not silent disagree with each other by a factor of two. Ask at the counter what is actually being charged.

Deadlines Oman does not publish

These are findings, not gaps in this page. Each one is a deadline a reader would reasonably expect to exist, that we went looking for in the Omani instruments and could not find. They are the most useful lines on the sheet, because they are the ones a consultant is most likely to invent.

  • No published CR renewal deadline, grace period or late-renewal fine. The only traceable penalty is the Article 18 band of OMR 100 to OMR 1,000 for failing to file a required application within the statutory period.
  • No deadline in days for VAT deregistration in the Law itself. Article 66 of Royal Decree 121/2020 governs cancellation on cessation of activity, but states no day count — it delegates that to the Regulations, which we did not retrieve from an official URL.
  • No published Social Protection Fund late-payment penalty rate. Four incompatible figures circulate — 13.5% per month, 5.5% a year, 1% a month and 8% a year — and the most-quoted one cites an article of the repealed 1991 Insurance Law. Article 49 gives the Fund authority to charge additional amounts; the rate is not published.
  • No ministerial decision under Labour Law Article 29 governing absconding procedure. Article 29 defers the controls, procedures and penalties to a decision that, as far as we can establish, has never been issued.
  • No official deadline for registering a worker's data after arrival. MD 602/2025 Article 10 prices the delay from the arrival date but does not state how many days you have. The widely repeated "30 days to complete formalities after arrival" has no Omani source we could find.
  • No deadline for registering a new establishment with the Fund, as opposed to registering a worker.
  • No statutory annual deadline for an LLC to file audited accounts with MOCIIP — only the request-driven seven working days under MD 146/2021.
  • No grace period or late surcharge published for the tax card. Several setup consultancies state a 30-day tax card deadline with penalties attached, and that figure traces to no Omani government source. The deadline you can point to is the 60-day income tax registration deadline.
If a consultant quotes you a deadline for one of these, ask where it comes from

There is a good answer to that question for every other line on this page — an article number, a decision, a Gazette issue. For the eight above there is not, and a confident number attached to one of them was invented somewhere upstream and copied since.

The useful follow-up is not "are you sure" but "which article". A figure with an instrument behind it survives that question. A figure without one does not.

When do wages have to be paid in Oman?
Within three days of the end of the period for which they are due, under Article 90 of the Labour Law, transferred to the worker's account at a bank licensed by the Central Bank of Oman. For a payroll running to the last day of the month, that means the money must land by the 3rd of the following month. The fifteenth is the UAE pattern and importing it will make you late every month — in Oman the fifteenth belongs to social insurance contributions, which are due in the first 15 days of the following month.
When is the VAT return due in Oman?
Within 30 days of the end of each calendar quarter, with payment due at the same time, under Article 72 of the VAT Law. Late payment attracts Additional Tax at 1% of the unpaid tax per month or part-month, running from the deadline until the tax is actually paid. Where a deadline falls on a weekend or public holiday it moves to the next working day, though that comes from PwC rather than from a government page.
Is there a deadline to renew a commercial registration in Oman?
No published one. There is no published CR renewal deadline, no published grace period and no published late-renewal fine — the only traceable penalty is the Article 18 band of OMR 100 to OMR 1,000 for failing to file a required application within the statutory period. What does have a published deadline is amendment: every change to a registered particular must be registered within one month, under Articles 8 and 10 of the Commercial Register Law 3/74.
When does e-invoicing become mandatory in Oman?
1 April 2027 if your annual supplies exceed OMR 5 million, and 1 October 2027 if they are at or below that figure. Both dates come from Decision 189/2026, published in Official Gazette issue 1660 on 9 August 2026. A voluntary pilot of about 100 taxpayers was scheduled to begin at the end of August 2026, but it is a pilot rather than a mandate and we cannot confirm it has started. The older four-phase timetable of August 2026, February 2027 and August 2027 is superseded.
How long do I have to register for income tax in Oman after setting up a company?
Sixty days from the date you commence activity, or from the date you register with the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion — whichever applies. It is not 30 days. Several setup consultancies state a 30-day tax card deadline with penalties attached, and that figure could not be traced to any Omani government source. The penalties that are officially published relate to returns rather than to the card: OMR 100 to OMR 2,000 for a late or missing income tax return, and 1% per month on unpaid tax.
What is the fine for renewing an Omani resident card late?
The two official pages disagree and the current law is silent. The Royal Oman Police English page gives OMR 10 for each month of delay; the Arabic version of the same page gives OMR 5 per month. Both pages are stale — they predate ROP Decision 78/2025 and ROP Decision 157/2025, and neither of those decisions contains a monthly late fee for the resident card at all. What both decisions do impose is the duty to renew within 30 days of expiry.

If you would rather not track this yourself, diarising the recurring lines is straightforward and we can run the monthly and quarterly filings from the office in Al Ghubra. The dated ones in the middle of the page are the ones worth putting in your own calendar today, because they arrive once and they do not repeat.

Sources

  1. OFFICIALRoyal Decree 53/2023 — the Labour Law (Articles 9, 10, 14, 19, 90, 91, 147)
  2. OFFICIALRoyal Decree 52/2023 — the Social Protection Law (Articles 49, 58)
  3. OFFICIALRoyal Decree 60/2025 — amending Royal Decree 52/2023 (savings system and work injury dates)
  4. OFFICIALOman Tax Authority — income tax FAQs (filing deadlines, penalties, tax card)
  5. OFFICIALOman Tax Authority — income tax registration, the 60-day rule
  6. OFFICIALOman Tax Authority — withholding tax, the fourteenth-day deadline
  7. OFFICIALQanoon.om — Decision 189/2026 on mandatory e-invoicing (Official Gazette 1660, 9 August 2026)
  8. OFFICIALRoyal Decree 56/2025 — Personal Income Tax Law, in force 1 January 2028
  9. OFFICIALMinisterial Decision 602/2025 — work licence and work-practice licence regulation (Articles 10, 11)
  10. OFFICIALRoyal Oman Police Decision 157/2025 — resident card validity, fee and 30-day renewal
  11. OFFICIALMuscat Municipality Decision 1/2018 — fees and the Article 4 late-payment penalty
  12. OFFICIALMinisterial Decision 1152/2/1/141/2026 — Executive Regulation of the Tourism Law (Gazette 1645, 26 April 2026)
  13. OFFICIALCommercial Register Law 3/74 — the one-month amendment rule (Articles 8, 10, 18)
  14. SECONDARYPwC Worldwide Tax Summaries — Oman, corporate compliance and payment dates

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This guide is for information only and is not legal or tax advice. Fees and rules in Oman change; always confirm with the relevant government authority before acting. The verification date is shown at the top of this page.