30K aed VAT penalty, need help....!

I’m looking for some guidance from people who have experience with UAE VAT matters. A relative of mine owns a very small AC and refrigerator repair shop. His income is quite low and definitely below the VAT registration threshold. Back in 2018, someone advised him to register for VAT, saying he might face penalties if he didn’t. Since he didn’t really understand the rules, he trusted that person and allowed him to register the business for VAT. The problem is that after the registration, no VAT returns were ever filed. Now in 2026, when we checked the account on the Federal Tax Authority portal, we found that there are around 8 years of pending VAT returns (roughly 32 quarterly returns) and the system is showing about AED 30,000 in penalties. My main concern is this: If we start filing all the pending VAT returns now as NIL returns (zero revenue) since the business was below the VAT threshold, will filing so many NIL returns create additional penalties? I’ve also heard from someone that there might be some limitation on filing too many zero returns, but I’m not sure if that’s actually true. If anyone has handled a similar situation with the Federal Tax Authority, I would really appreciate hearing your experience or advice on the best way to handle this.