Annual Compliance — Due Dates & Checklists

The Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025 have entered Phase 2, with the Data Protection Board moving from awareness-building to active oversight between August and November 2026. Every business that collects a customer's name, phone number, email, Aadhaar, or PAN is a Data Fiduciary and needs a consent, grievance, and retention framework in place well before the May 13, 2027 full-compliance deadline.

EPFO's VISHWAS 2026 one-time settlement scheme lets employers close pending PF damage and penalty disputes for defaults before 14 June 2024 at sharply reduced rates. The window under Paragraph 23 of the EPF Scheme, 2026 closes on 28 December 2026, and eligibility depends on clearing Section 7Q interest in full first.

Every October the same claim circulates: statutory bonus is 20% of your salary. It is not. Statutory bonus in India is a floor of 8.33% and a ceiling of 20%, and it is calculated not on your actual pay but on a capped wage figure of Rs 7,000 per month, or the notified minimum wage for your scheduled employment if that is higher. Eligibility itself stops at Rs 21,000 of monthly basic plus dearness allowance. On 25 August 2026 the Ministry of Labour and Employment notified the bonus eligibility and calculation rules under the Code on Wages, 2019, carrying both figures forward from the 2016 amendment to the Payment of Bonus Act, 1965. This article sets out the operative sections under both statutes, works through four real salary scenarios, explains the five-year infancy exemption under Section 16, the set-on and set-off mechanism, the Section 43B timing trap for employers, and the 30 November 2026 payment deadline for the accounting year ended 31 March 2026.

Ask ten HR managers who qualifies for 26 weeks of paid maternity leave and most will say the same thing: it is for confirmed permanent employees with a year of service, and small offices are exempt. Every part of that is wrong. The Maternity Benefit Act 1961, as amended in 2017, never uses the word "permanent", requires no minimum tenure, and covers establishments with just ten employees on any day in the preceding twelve months. The only eligibility test in Section 5(2) is 80 days actually worked in the twelve months before the expected date of delivery. This article sets out the real coverage threshold, the 26-week and 12-week entitlements, how average daily wage must be computed on full Section 3(n) wages rather than basic salary, the Section 11A creche mandate that attaches at 50 employees regardless of gender mix, adoption and commissioning-mother rights, the interaction with ESIC, and the Section 21 penalty that carries a mandatory minimum three-month custodial sentence — with a worked example showing a Rs.5.5 lakh underpayment gap created by the most common HR error.

Almost every employer who receives a minimum wages notice was paying above the minimum wage. That is not a paradox — it is the most common failure pattern in Indian wage compliance. The employer compares total monthly salary against the state's notified rate; the inspector compares the skill classification of each worker against the currently notified rate including the latest VDA, for the correct employment, supported by statutory registers most employers do not maintain. The ground shifted materially in the last year: the Code on Wages 2019 became enforceable from 21 November 2025, the Code on Wages (Central) Rules 2026 were notified on 8 May 2026, and revised VDA rates took effect from 1 April 2026. This guide covers why Section 5 ends the scheduled-employment limitation, why the Section 9 floor wage is not your benchmark, the 50% proviso in the Section 2(y) definition of wages that collapses allowance-heavy salary structures, the Section 54 penalty exposure, and an eight-step remediation sequence.

The most expensive sentence in Indian labour compliance is "those aren't our employees, they're on the contractor's rolls." Under the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970, the principal employer does not shed responsibility along with the invoice. Section 20 makes him liable to provide amenities the contractor fails to provide. Section 21 makes him liable to pay wages in full where the contractor defaults, and requires his nominated representative to be present and certify disbursement. EPF and ESIC exposure follows the same logic. This article sets out the twin twenty-worker thresholds and the state-notified lower limits, the Form I to Form V to Form VI registration and licensing sequence, exactly where joint and several liability bites with worked rupee numbers, the Section 25 exposure for directors and officers who sign Form V without checking the contractor's licence, and a ten-step operational checklist covering trailing-headcount reconstruction, licence ceiling verification, wage-disbursement certification, retention-backed arrears payment, and the sham-arrangement test.

The most common thing we hear from founders with a 12-person team is that POSH applies to big companies and can wait until 50 employees. It cannot. The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 has a headcount trigger of ten employees — of any gender, including contract and agency staff — not fifty or a hundred. And the obligation is not a one-time registration: it is a standing Internal Committee with a prescribed composition and a three-year term under Section 4, an external member who cannot be skipped, an annual report to the District Officer under Section 21 that must be filed even in a nil-complaint year, and a disclosure in the Board's Report under Section 22 read with Rule 8(5)(x) of the Companies (Accounts) Rules, 2014. Section 26 attaches a fine of up to ₹50,000 — and on a second conviction, twice that plus possible cancellation of the licence or registration you need to carry on business. This article sets out exactly what the law requires, the timelines that run against you, and a ten-step compliance sequence.

Two contradictory claims circulate every retirement season: that leave encashment is fully tax-free, and that only Rs 3 lakh is exempt. Both are wrong for most people. Full exemption under Section 10(10AA)(i) applies only to Central and State Government employees — not to PSU, nationalised bank, or statutory corporation staff, however governmental the workplace feels. Everyone else falls under the least-of-four test, whose outer ceiling rose from Rs 3,00,000 to Rs 25,00,000 with effect from 1 April 2023 via CBDT Notification No. 31/2023. That Rs 25 lakh is a lifetime aggregate across all employers, not a per-employer figure, and the binding constraint is more often the ten-months-average-salary limb or the 30-days-per-completed-year cap than the ceiling itself. Leave encashed while still in service gets no exemption at all. This piece works through the statutory text, five worked cases, a ten-step self-computation, and what to do if CPC allowed you only Rs 3 lakh on a post-April-2023 receipt.

Ask most salaried employees why Rs.200 disappears from their payslip every month and you will hear one of three wrong answers: that it is a central government levy, that it applies only to doctors and lawyers because it is called professional tax, or that it is optional if the employer forgets to deduct it. All three are wrong, and the third is expensive for the employer. Professional tax is a State levy under Article 276 of the Constitution, capped at Rs.2,500 per person per year since 1988. This guide covers which states levy it, the current Karnataka, Maharashtra and Telangana slab rates, the PTEC versus PTRC registration distinction, the employer deduction and remittance duty, and why the Section 19 deduction under ITA 2025 is available only in the old regime.

Three claims about ESIC circulate constantly among Indian employers, and all three are wrong. That the applicability threshold is 20 employees. That the Rs.21,000 wage ceiling was raised to Rs.25,000 or Rs.30,000. And that once the four labour codes were notified in November 2025, ESI compliance could be paused until things settled. This article sets out what the law actually says as of August 2026: the threshold is 10 employees in most states (20 only in Maharashtra and Chandigarh), the Rs.21,000 ceiling under Rule 50 has not moved since January 2017 and no gazette notification revising it exists, and although the Code on Social Security 2020 was notified on 21 November 2025 with Central Rules following on 8 May 2026, Chapter IV covering ESI has not been separately brought into force — the existing ESI Act machinery continues in full. Covers the 0.75%/3.25% contribution split, what Section 2(22) counts as wages, the overtime asymmetry, the mid-contribution-period crossing rule, principal employer liability for contractor staff under Section 40, and the full eight-step registration and filing sequence.

Nine out of ten payroll teams compute EPF as 12% of basic salary. The statute never uses the phrase "basic salary" — it says basic wages, and after the EPF Scheme, 2026 took effect on 29 June 2026, that term is anchored to Section 2(y) of the Code on Social Security, 2020 along with its 50% wage rule. This article works through what actually forms the PF base: the Supreme Court universality test from RPFC v. Vivekananda Vidyamandir, why a uniformly paid "special allowance" is basic wages regardless of its label, how the 50% rule pulls excess excluded components back into wages, and where the Rs.15,000 statutory ceiling now stands after the January 2026 Supreme Court direction to review it. It quantifies seven-year Section 7A exposure with Section 7Q interest and Section 14B damages, flags the Section 17(2) perquisite trap above Rs.7,50,000 that a PF correction can trigger, and sets out a seven-step remediation sequence for employers.

The DPDP Consent Manager Framework opens 13 November 2026 — 89 days away. Full enforcement follows 13 May 2027. Here is your 7-step checklist to build DPDP compliance before the deadline.

EPFO 3.0 (effective 29 June 2026) introduces UPI withdrawals of up to 75% of PF balance, ATM cards, and ₹5 lakh auto-settlement — all without employer approval. Here is what employers and employees must know.

From April 1, 2026, the Income Tax Act, 2025 renumbered every TDS and TCS return form. Form 26Q is now Form 140, Form 24Q is Form 138, and Form 27EQ is Form 143. Filing old form numbers on TRACES results in rejection and late fees of ₹200 per day. Here's the complete mapping and what you need to do before the Q2 deadline of October 31, 2026.

If you filed your FLA Return for FY 2025-26 with provisional figures by 31 July, you must now file a revised return with audited figures by 30 September 2026. Companies that missed the July deadline face Late Submission Fees and FEMA penalties under Section 13. Here's what you need to do.

Export Promotion Capital Goods and Advance Authorisation holders with obligations expiring between March–May 2026 have until 31 August 2026 to file Export Obligation Discharge Certificates digitally via ICEGATE. Physical duty challans are no longer accepted from 1 August 2026.

Effective July 16, 2026, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has nearly doubled All Industry Rates (AIR) for duty drawback on gold and silver jewellery exports under Notification 64/2026-Customs (N.T.). A mid-size exporter shipping 500 grams of gold jewellery per consignment now recovers an additional ₹5.4 lakh in annual cash flow.

The RBI's 2026 amendment to NBFC Scale-Based Regulation introduces Type I/II classification and replaces parametric scoring with a hard ₹1 lakh crore asset threshold for Upper Layer status. Holding companies and intra-group lenders may now qualify for an Unregistered Type I category, eliminating RBI registration requirements.

The RBI's third amendment to NBFC IRAC Directions (effective 1 October 2026) ends accrual-basis income recognition on acquired stressed assets and mandates cash-basis income only. NBFCs holding Specified Non-Financial Assets must reverse previously recognised unrealised income by 30 September 2027.

The RBI TReDS Directions 2026 lower the mandatory registration threshold from ₹500 crore to ₹250 crore turnover. All CPSEs must also route MSME settlements through TReDS. Here's what corporate anchor buyers must do to comply.

From 30 June 2026, all operating Central Public Sector Enterprises must route MSME procurement invoices through RBI-authorised TReDS platforms. MSME suppliers can now access early payment within 2 days, transforming working capital cycles and reducing borrowing costs.

On 21 July 2026, the RBI published Draft FEMA (Foreign Investment) Rules 2026, proposing a comprehensive overhaul of India's inbound FDI framework. The draft replaces the 2019 Non-Debt Instruments Rules with a simplified, principle-based structure. Every Indian company with foreign investment and every CA advising on cross-border transactions must understand the proposed changes—and the 31 August 2026 consultation deadline offers a rare opportunity to influence the final framework.

The Foreign Liabilities and Assets (FLA) annual return deadline for FY 2025-26 was 15 July 2026. If you missed it, filing immediately on FLAIR reduces penalty exposure. Late submission fees apply, but voluntary filing is far better than enforcement action under FEMA 1999.

CBDT's CS 04 scrutiny category targets charitable trusts and NGOs claiming exemption under Sections 11, 12AB, or 10(23C) with registration defects or mismatches. This checklist covers Section 12AB renewal, Form 10B/10BB audit filing, donor reconciliation, and Section 13 violations—everything you need to verify before ITR-7 due dates in July–October 2026.

The Bombay High Court has ruled that rejection of Section 12AB registration solely because a trust deed lacks an irrevocability clause is unlawful. This landmark judgment protects charitable trusts and NGOs from arbitrary denials. Here's what changed and what you must do next.

The new EPF Scheme 2026 opens three time-limited amnesty windows: VISHWAS (₹100 damage settlement), Enrolment Campaign (waived employee share, 31 October 2026 deadline), and PF Trust Amnesty. Employers with pending Section 14B damages, unenrolled eligible workers, or unnotified private trusts must act before December 2026 to avoid full enforcement.

RBI's April 2026 Amendment Directions introduce the Unregistered Type I NBFC category, allowing holding companies and group treasuries with sub-₹1,000 crore assets to operate without RBI registration. A 31 December 2026 deregistration window is now open for entities currently holding an NBFC Certificate of Registration.

The Income-tax Act 2025 and Income-tax Rules 2026 have renumbered all compliance forms for charitable trusts, NGOs, and exempt institutions. Form 112 now consolidates audit reporting, Form 113 replaces donor statements, and Section 332 replaces Section 12AB. Understand the new requirements, deadlines, and penalties for AY 2026-27 filing.

From 3 July 2026, EPFO moved UAN activation and direct allotment to the UMANG mobile app with mandatory Aadhaar Face Authentication. Employers must update onboarding checklists to ensure new hires complete this step on their own phones, and continue filing ECR by the 15th of each month.

The Ministry of MSME's 30 June 2026 notification makes it mandatory for all operating Central Public Sector Enterprises to settle MSME invoices through RBI-authorised TReDS platforms. MSME suppliers gain immediate working-capital access; CPSEs face new auditor certification duties.

The Ministry of Home Affairs has amended the Foreign Contribution Regulation Rules, effective 22 June 2026. Every FCRA-registered organisation must now attach UDIN-certified CA certificates to Form FC-4, disclose social-media handles, and prove utilisation of at least ₹10 lakh over two years—or face cancellation.

CBDT Circular 06/2026 (2 July 2026) now condones late Form 10AB filings for charitable trusts seeking final 80G approval, provided applications were filed electronically between 1 October 2025 and 31 March 2026. The delay is waived; applications proceed on merits by 31 December 2026.

On 29 June 2026, the Ministry of Labour & Employment notified the Employees' Pension Scheme, 2026 under the Code on Social Security, 2020, replacing EPS 1995. Contribution rates remain unchanged at 8.33% employer + 1.16% Central Government, accrued pension rights are protected, and new claim-processing timelines apply.

The Employees' Provident Funds Scheme, 2026 replaced the 1952 framework, but the wage ceiling remains ₹15,000 per month—not ₹25,000. Three time-bound cleanup windows are now open for employers with enrolment gaps or exemption issues.

On 24 June 2026, the RBI issued two A.P. (DIR Series) Circulars that reduce FEMA reporting burden for Authorised Persons and money transfer agents. Circular 17 discontinues prior approval for foreign currency note write-offs and de-formalises prescribed register formats; Circular 18 withdraws obsolete directives. Here's what changed and who it affects.

The MCA has amended Rule 12A of the Companies (Appointment and Qualification of Directors) Rules, 2014 to move DIR-3 KYC filing from annual to once every three financial years, effective 31 March 2026. The due date shifts from 30 September to 30 June of the third financial year after your last filing.

26AS is the only ledger you can claim TDS credit from — not AIS SFT entries alone. If Form 16 and 26AS differ, claim what 26AS shows and document with Form 16 plus the 26AS extract; never claim credit in neither document.

s.285BA AIS feedback protects you when AIS shows interest or rent you didn't earn — mark the entry 'Information is incorrect', the status turns Modified or Disputed, which blocks a 143(1) adjustment but does not remove the entry. Keep the acknowledgment.

Five adjustments cause most 143(1) demands: TDS credit denied on a 26AS mismatch, 234B interest for advance-tax shortfall, loss carry-forward disallowed under s.80, rounding differences, and 80C/80D disallowed on a Form 16 mismatch — each has a specific remedy, from AIS feedback to rectification.

₹100–₹5,000 is the size of a typical post-filing demand — s.140A self-assessment interest on an underpaid balance, rounding, or a minor TDS mismatch — paid via challan 280 code 400 within 30 days to stop s.220(2) interest, or rectified u/s 154 if the CPC erred.

₹500–₹5,000 is the typical 143(1) demand for an arithmetical error, an incorrect claim, or a disallowed loss — with four paths: pay it, revise u/s 139(5) if you erred, rectify u/s 154 if the CPC erred, or appeal u/s 246A within 30 days.

3 years is the default reassessment limit (for escaped income < ₹50 lakh) after a s.148A(b) show-cause and s.148A(d) order — extended to 10 years where escaped income is ₹50 lakh or more (s.149(1)(b)), and up to 16 years where the escaped income is represented by a foreign asset (s.149(1A)). You get at least 7 days to reply to the show-cause before any s.148 notice.

ITR-1 is only for resident individuals with salary, one house property, and other sources up to ₹50 lakh — any capital gain, F&O income, foreign asset, VDA, second house, directorship, or unlisted shareholding forces ITR-2 or ITR-3. Wrong form risks a s.139(9) defective return.

15 days is your window to refile after a s.139(9) defective-return notice — the classic case being an ITR-1 filed with capital gains, foreign assets, or VDA income that must move to ITR-2. Ignore it and the return is treated as never filed, barring loss carry-forward.

Six-step AIS workflow: download the AIS as PDF and JSON, match every entry to your actual income, submit feedback for each discrepancy ('Information is incorrect', 'Income already included in ITR', etc.), watch the status turn Modified/Disputed, then file on your real income and save every feedback acknowledgment number.

s.245 ITA 1961 lets the CPC adjust your refund against an outstanding demand without prior intimation — your options: agree, respond within 30 days if the demand is wrong, rectify u/s 154 for a CPC error, or appeal in Form 35 to the CIT(A) within 30 days.

Returning NRIs are automatically RNOR for 2-3 years under s.6(6) ITA 1961 — during which foreign income is completely exempt from Indian tax. Here is how to use this window.

Received a tax demand in your 143(1) intimation? Learn what CPC processing means, why adjustments happen, and whether to pay, disagree, or file a revised return.

A Section 139(9) defective return notice is a technical filing error, not a tax demand. You have 15 days to refile in the correct form. Here is how to fix the 5 most common defects.

Employer EPF compliance is non-negotiable. This guide covers registration thresholds, contribution rates, electronic challan reconciliation (ECR) filing deadlines, and the sharp Section 14B penalties that apply when employers fail to remit contributions on time.

ESIC (Employees' State Insurance Corporation) registration is mandatory for employers once payroll crosses a threshold. Learn when registration kicks in, contribution splits, and how to file Form 6 monthly returns.

Professional tax is a state-level levy on professionals and employment income, applicable only in specific states. Rates range from Rs. 0 to Rs. 2,500 annually, with quarterly or monthly deductions. Missing deadlines triggers penalties--know your state's rules to stay compliant.

Shops and Establishments registration is state-controlled, not centralized. Every state has different rules, renewal timelines, and inspection protocols. This guide covers the state-by-state framework and what labour inspectors actually check.

The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, mandates that companies with 10+ employees establish an Internal Complaints Committee and file annual reports. Non-compliance triggers significant penalties. Here's what you must know.

The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 imposes strict compliance obligations on principal employers who engage contract workers. Understand Form V registration, licensing requirements, and recent amendments to stay compliant and avoid penalties.