Startup compliance calendar 2026

Your first year is measured from incorporation, not from April

Almost every compliance calendar you will find starts in April and runs to March, which is useless in the year that matters most. A newly incorporated company's earliest binding deadlines are measured from the date of incorporation itself, and several of them fall long before your first GST return is due.

These are the ones that catch first-time founders, in the order they arrive:

First board meeting — within 30 days of incorporation

Section 173(1) of the Companies Act, 2013 requires the first meeting of the board within thirty days of incorporation. In practice this is also the meeting at which you appoint the first auditor and authorise the bank account, so it does real work rather than being a formality.

First auditor — within 30 days of incorporation

Under Section 139(6) the board appoints the company's first auditor within thirty days of incorporation. If the board fails to, the power shifts to the members, who must do it within ninety days at an extraordinary general meeting.

INC-20A, declaration of commencement of business — within 180 days

Section 10A. Until it is filed, the company may not commence business or exercise borrowing powers. This is the single most consequential first-year filing and the one most often missed, because nothing prompts you — you simply start trading and are technically not entitled to. It requires proof that every subscriber has paid the value of the shares agreed to be taken.

First AGM — within 9 months of the first financial year end

Section 96 gives a first-year company nine months rather than the usual six, and no extension beyond that. Your AOC-4 and MGT-7 deadlines are then measured from that AGM date, so a late first AGM cascades into two late ROC filings.

Which obligations actually apply to you

A compliance calendar is only useful once you know which rows are yours. Most of these obligations are triggered by something you did — registering, hiring, crossing a turnover threshold — rather than applying to every entity from birth. The structural ones, which apply from incorporation regardless of activity, are the registrar filings for companies and LLPs.

GST returns

Triggered by registration, not by turnover. Once you hold a GSTIN you file every period, including nil returns, until the registration is surrendered. Voluntarily registering early — common, because customers ask for it — starts the filing clock immediately.

TDS deposit and returns

Triggered the first time you make a payment on which tax is deductible: rent, professional fees, contractor payments, salary above the threshold. There is no separate 'TDS registration' — you need a TAN, and the obligation follows the payment.

EPF and ESI

Triggered by headcount crossing the coverage thresholds under the respective Acts, or by voluntary coverage. Once covered, you stay covered even if headcount later falls.

Registrar filings (companies and LLPs)

Structural. AOC-4 and MGT-7 for a company, Form 11 and Form 8 for an LLP, due whether or not you traded, earned or spent anything. A dormant year does not excuse them.

Income tax return

A company or LLP files a return every year regardless of income. For a loss-making startup this is not a formality — see the carry-forward point below.

What actually happens when you miss one — beyond the late fee

Founders under-rate compliance because they assume the worst case is a fee they can pay later. For the routine monthly filings that is broadly true. For several of these it is not, and the real consequences are structural rather than financial.

The amounts and rates are deliberately not stated here, because they change and because a number without its working is worth little. Where we can compute one, the calendar rows link a calculator that shows the arithmetic.

Losing your carried-forward losses — the expensive one for startups

Business losses may only be carried forward to set off against future profits if the return for the loss year was filed by the due date under Section 263(1) of the Income-tax Act, 2025 (Section 139(1) of the 1961 Act). File late and, under Section 121 (formerly Sections 139(3) and 80), that year's business loss is simply gone. A startup burning cash for four years is accumulating its single most valuable tax asset; a missed filing deadline destroys that year's slice of it, and there is no way to restore it later. Unabsorbed depreciation is treated differently, which is cold comfort.

Director disqualification

Under Section 164(2), a director of a company that has not filed its financial statements or annual returns for three consecutive financial years is disqualified — and the disqualification attaches to the person, barring them from being a director of ANY company, not merely the defaulting one. Founders discover this when they try to incorporate their next venture.

The company being struck off

The Registrar may strike a company off under Section 248 where it is not carrying on business or has not filed for a sustained period. Restoration means an application to the Tribunal — slow, costly, and fatal to any fundraise or acquisition in progress.

DIN deactivation

Miss DIR-3 KYC Web — now due by 30 June once every three financial years, and within 30 days of any change in a director's mobile number, email or address — and the director's DIN is deactivated until it is filed with the prescribed fee. A deactivated DIN blocks that person from signing filings, which stalls everything else on this page.

Blocked GST filings and cancelled registration

Non-filing compounds: an unfiled GSTR-3B blocks the subsequent GSTR-1 under Rule 59(6), so one missed month freezes the next, and sustained non-filing is a ground for cancellation of registration under Section 29. Interest on the tax itself runs under Section 50 independently of any late fee.

Disallowed expenditure on unpaid TDS

Beyond interest under Section 398(3) and the fee under Section 427 for late returns (Sections 201(1A) and 234E of the 1961 Act), failing to deduct or deposit TDS can cause part of the underlying expense to be disallowed under Section 35(b)(i) (formerly Section 40(a)(ia)) — you lose the deduction on the payment itself, which usually costs more than the interest.

Advance tax interest

Under Sections 424 and 425 (formerly Sections 234B and 234C), interest runs on shortfalls in advance tax instalments. This one bites profitable companies that only think about tax at year end, and it accrues quietly across the four instalment dates.

How to actually run this without a full-time finance hire

The failure mode is almost never that a founder decided to skip a filing. It is that nothing in the week prompted them and the date passed. Three habits fix most of it.

First, separate the monthly rhythm from the annual cliff. The GST, TDS and payroll rows repeat twelve times a year and belong to whoever does your books; once they are running they mostly run themselves. The annual filings — the ROC cycle, DPT-3, the tax audit — and the three-yearly DIR-3 KYC arrive once, have no muscle memory attached, and are what people actually miss. Put those in a calendar with a month of lead time, not a week.

Second, work backwards from the dependency chain rather than from each date in isolation. Your AOC-4 and MGT-7 dates are set by your AGM date; your AGM needs audited accounts; your audit needs closed books. A late book close in July is what causes a late ROC filing in November, and by then the fee is already unavoidable.

Third, keep the registrations you do not use under review. Every dormant GST registration and every unused TAN is an obligation that keeps generating filings. If a registration is not earning its keep, surrender it deliberately rather than leaving it to accrue nil-return defaults.