The compliance calendar every private limited company keeps missing

By CA Rahul Khurana · R Khurana & Associates · August 2026

No founder we have ever met set out to miss a filing. What actually happens is quieter: the company is incorporated, business takes over, and compliance becomes a series of surprises — an email about a form you have never heard of, a late fee that feels arbitrary, a director’s DIN suddenly deactivated. The problem is not negligence. The problem is that a private limited company’s obligations live in four different worlds — the Companies Act, income tax, GST, and payroll law — and nobody handed you the merged calendar.

The four calendars you are actually running

• ROC / Companies Act: statutory audit of accounts, AOC-4 (financial statements) and MGT-7/7A (annual return), board meetings with minutes, the AGM, statutory registers, and DIR-3 KYC for every director — with late fees that accrue per day and no upper mercy.
• Income tax: the company’s return, advance tax instalments through the year, and tax audit where thresholds apply.
• GST: monthly or quarterly returns, the annual return, and the reconciliations that keep them defensible.
• TDS & payroll: monthly deposits, quarterly returns, and certificates — the calendar that punishes forgetfulness fastest, because interest applies from day one.

Why it breaks

Each obligation looks small in isolation. Together they form thirty-plus dated events a year — and the ones that hurt most are the ones with no natural reminder. Nothing about day-to-day business tells you DIR-3 KYC season has arrived. Late fees for annual ROC forms accumulate per day of delay; a director’s KYC lapse can deactivate their DIN. These are self-inflicted wounds in the most literal sense: entirely preventable, and entirely common.

What working companies do differently

1. One merged calendar, owned by one person. Internal or external — but someone wakes up accountable for every dated event.
2. Compliance follows the transaction, not the deadline. Books closed monthly make every filing a formality; books reconstructed at deadline make every filing an emergency.
3. A quarterly review. Thirty minutes, four times a year, walking the calendar — the same habit our GST Health Checklist builds for indirect tax.

We run this entire merged calendar for our company clients — audit, ROC, income tax, GST, and TDS under one engagement — precisely because fragmentation, not intent, is what breaks compliance.

This article is general information, not professional advice. Provisions, thresholds, and due dates are amended from time to time — please confirm the current position or consult us before acting. © 2026 R Khurana & Associates, Chartered Accountants, Delhi.