Mashreq Bank has hosted its first VAT awareness seminar for SME clients, in collaboration with Morison MJS Tax Consultancy.

With the UAE set to introduce VAT on January 1st, 2018, Mashreq launched a VAT awareness campaign for its SME customers on how VAT will affect their businesses. The campaign consists of a series of seminars and webinars over the next 3 months.

Speaking about the seminar, Rohit Garg, Head of Business Banking at Mashreq, said, "The introduction of VAT sees the UAE implement a very critical change in the way business is done. Our partnership with Morison MJS Tax Consultancy aims to educate Mashreq Business Banking clients on VAT matters, ensuring that they are always kept up-to-date."

He continued, "Learning about VAT gives businesses the opportunity to prepare for the change. The seminar gave customers the proper awareness about the impending rules and what help they need before the implementation."

Nearly 200 Mashreq clients from various industries attended the seminar which was a free value added service for Mashreq SME clients. This will be followed up with a series of webinars and seminars from October to December.

VAT is a staged process in which each business in the supply chain takes part in the process of controlling and collecting the tax, finally remitting the proportion of tax corresponding to its margin. The tax is then collected on the value which is added at each stage of production and distribution.