Start with the article itself, because everything else in this lesson is an elaboration of it. Art. 14(1) permits two or more persons to register as a Tax Group where three things are true at the same time. Source: Federal Decree-Law 8/2017, Art. 14(1).

• each of the persons has a Place of Establishment or a Fixed Establishment in the State;
• the persons are Related Parties;
• one or more persons conducting business in partnership control the others.

The conjunction is in that sentence — all three conditions must hold. The disjunction is inside the second one. Related Parties, for this purpose, is defined by the VAT Executive Regulation, and it offers four independent routes: voting interests of 50% or more, or a market value interest of 50% or more, or control by any other means, or each person being a Related Party of a third person. Any single route is enough. Source: VAT Executive Regulation (Cabinet Decision 52/2017), Art. 9.

Art. 9(2) adds a further test, framed around economic, financial and regulatory practices rather than around a percentage. It matters because it reaches structures that no shareholding table describes — common management, financial interdependence, a shared regulatory footprint. Where your relationship rests on that limb rather than on a number, write the reasoning down at the time you form the group, because the evidence is qualitative and it will not reconstruct itself two years later. Source: VAT Executive Regulation (Cabinet Decision 52/2017), Art. 9(2).

Here is the disjunction working on real interests. Gulf Fittings Holding LLC is a Dubai company with four subsidiaries, and the same structure is carried through this course to Lesson 6.

Read Marina Fit-Out first. Art. 9 says 50% or more, so exactly 50% is inside the test rather than on the wrong side of it. A holding of 49.9% would not be, and that is a real distinction rather than a rounding question — settle it from the share register, not from a spreadsheet that has been rounded for presentation.

Now read Coastal Glass, which is the whole point of the word disjunctive. Its voting interest is 35% and fails that limb outright. Its market value interest is 58% and passes the second. Under Art. 9 the second route is sufficient on its own, so Coastal Glass is a Related Party and the failing limb is simply irrelevant. Anyone applying a Corporate Tax habit of mind here — every limb must pass — would exclude a company that the VAT law includes.

The click path. Open Accounting → Configuration → UAE Tax Groups → VAT Groups. Create the group, add the members, and fill in each member's interests and conditions. The module's guide names the Condition Met column and tells you to record each member's interests and conditions; it does not enumerate the individual field labels, so this course does not quote labels it cannot source. Open the member line and read them off the form — they follow the article you have just read.

The application is made by one member, not by all of them. The group selects one registered member as the representative member, and that member makes the application. The FTA should decide within 20 business days. The FTA may also register related parties as a Tax Group on its own assessment, which is worth knowing before anyone assumes that grouping is purely elective. Source: Federal Decree-Law 8/2017, Art. 14, and the VAT Executive Regulation, Cabinet Decision 52/2017.

What this course does not tell you is what follows from registration. The verified law behind this course covers the formation test in Art. 14(1) and the Related Parties definition in Art. 9, and that is exactly what the module models. How supplies between members are treated once the group exists, how the group's registration number works, and how liability sits across the members are outside it. Do not infer those answers from this course or from the module — settle them with your advisor and against the FTA's own guidance before you rely on them in a return.

The failure mode: applying the Corporate Tax habit to the VAT test. The symptom is a member left out of a VAT group because one interest looks low, and the cause is reading the routes as a checklist rather than as alternatives. Coastal Glass at 35% of the votes is the case in point: excluded on a conjunctive reading, included on the correct disjunctive one. Test each route in turn and stop at the first one that passes.