The Startup Compliance Checklist for FY 2026-27

Every founder starts the financial year meaning to stay on top of compliance, and most lose the thread by the second quarter — not from carelessness, but because the deadlines live in five different places: GST here, TDS there, ROC on its own calendar entirely. This is the single checklist that pulls them into one place.

GST: the monthly cadence

If you're GST-registered, two filings repeat every month without exception: GSTR-1 (outward supplies) and GSTR-3B (summary return with tax payment). Both carry late fees and interest if missed, and a late GSTR-3B also delays your buyers' ability to claim input credit on your invoices — which has a way of becoming a customer relationship problem, not just a compliance one.

The step most founders skip is 2B reconciliation — matching your purchase register against your GSTR-2B before you file, so you're not silently leaving eligible input credit unclaimed. We cover this in more depth in our GST returns & reconciliation guide.

TDS: quarterly returns, monthly deposits

TDS deducted on salaries, professional fees, rent or contractor payments needs to be deposited monthly and returned quarterly — Form 24Q for salaries, Form 26Q for everything else. The most common error we see is the wrong section applied at the point of deduction (194C vs 194J vs 194H), which surfaces months later as a mismatch notice. Getting classification right at the point of payment avoids the correction cycle entirely.

Two habits make TDS painless: classify every vendor correctly at onboarding rather than at invoice time, and reconcile your returns against Form 26AS each quarter so mismatches never reach the notice stage. We go deeper on the classification trap in our post on 194C vs 194J.

Income tax: advance tax and the annual return

Beyond GST and TDS, your company owes income tax on its own profits — and the tax department expects most of it paid through the year, not in a lump at the end. Companies with a tax liability above the threshold pay advance tax in four instalments across the year; underpaying attracts interest, so it's worth estimating your position each quarter rather than waiting.

• Advance tax — paid in four instalments (June, September, December, March) based on estimated annual profit.
• Income tax return (ITR-6) — companies file their annual return by the due date each assessment year.
• Tax audit — applies once turnover crosses the prescribed threshold, with its own report and deadline.

The GST annual return (GSTR-9) sits alongside this — a full-year reconciliation that catches every small monthly gap at once. We break it down in our guide to the GST annual return.

ROC: annual, but non-negotiable

Regardless of turnover or whether you traded at all this year, your company or LLP owes the Registrar of Companies a fixed set of annual filings:

• AOC-4 — financial statements, filed within 30 days of your AGM.
• MGT-7 / MGT-7A — annual return, filed within 60 days of your AGM.
• DIR-3 KYC — annual KYC for every director, or their DIN gets deactivated.
• LLP Form 11 & Form 8 — the LLP equivalents, on their own annual cycle.

Miss any of these and the penalty is a flat ₹100 per day, per form, with no upper cap — a filing a year late costs meaningfully more than the base fee alone. Our ROC & annual filings service tracks all of this against your actual entity type.

Payroll: PF, ESI and the Labour Codes

If you've crossed 20 employees, PF registration is mandatory; ESI kicks in based on employee wage levels and headcount thresholds. On top of the usual monthly cycle, the Labour Codes' phased rollout is changing how "wages" are defined for PF and gratuity purposes in some states — worth a proactive review rather than discovering the change during an audit.

The year, quarter by quarter

It helps to see how these obligations cluster across the financial year rather than as one long list. The rough shape looks like this:

• Every month — GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B, TDS deposits, and payroll statutory deposits (PF, ESI, professional tax).
• Every quarter — TDS returns (24Q/26Q), advance-tax instalments, and issuing TDS certificates (Form 16A).
• Once a year — ROC filings (AOC-4, MGT-7), statutory audit, income-tax return, GST annual return (GSTR-9), DIR-3 KYC, and Form 16 for employees.

The monthly items are the ones that quietly pile up if ignored; the annual items are the ones that carry the steepest penalties. A well-run compliance function keeps both moving without you having to hold the calendar in your head.

Most missed deadlines aren't about carelessness — they're about not having one place that shows every obligation your specific entity actually owes.

What happens if you've already fallen behind

If some of this is news to you and you suspect you're behind, don't panic — but don't leave it either. Late filings almost always get more expensive the longer they sit, and a couple of them (like ROC filings and director KYC) escalate from a fee into a genuine risk of penalties or director disqualification. The fix is a structured catch-up: assess exactly what's overdue, quantify the exposure, file the backlog in the right order, and then move onto a clean cadence so it doesn't recur.

This is routine work — our compliance service regularly onboards companies that are months behind and brings them current. The important thing is to start before the next deadline stacks on top of the last one.

Registrations you may also need

The core cycle above assumes you already hold the right registrations. But part of staying compliant is holding the ones your business actually needs — and not discovering a gap during an assessment. Beyond incorporation, check whether these apply to you:

• GST registration — mandatory once turnover crosses the threshold, and immediately if you sell inter-state or on marketplaces.
• Professional Tax — a state-level registration for employers in many states, with its own periodic returns.
• Shops & Establishment / labour registrations — depending on your state and headcount.
• Import Export Code (IEC) — needed if you'll import or export goods or services.
• Startup India / DPIIT recognition — optional, but it unlocks tax and compliance benefits worth checking. See our DPIIT recognition guide.

The trap here isn't the filing itself — it's not knowing which registrations apply to your specific business. A short review at the start maps exactly what you need, so you're neither missing an obligation nor paying for one you don't.

Put it on one calendar

The single highest-leverage fix here isn't remembering more — it's mapping every due date your specific registrations create, once, and reviewing it monthly. That's exactly what our compliance calendar service does: a live view of what's filed, what's due, and what's coming, built from your actual GST, TDS, ROC and payroll registrations rather than a generic template.

If you're not sure what your company currently owes, that's the right place to start — we'll map it for you on a call. Most founders find that once the full picture is on a single calendar with reminders, compliance stops being a source of background anxiety and becomes a quiet, predictable monthly rhythm. That shift — from scrambling at deadlines to running a steady cadence — is the whole point of getting organised early in the financial year rather than late.