The Compliance Calendar: Withholding, Goods and Services Tax, and What Changed
A compliance calendar written in 2024 is now wrong in several places at once. The section numbers changed on 1 April 2026, the form numbers changed with them, the goods and services tax rate structure was rebuilt in September 2025, and the monthly return stopped being freely editable. This guide is the calendar as it stands, with the changes marked.
- Withholding: two Acts, new sections, new forms, uniform quarterly dates
- Goods and services tax: the rate rebuild, the summary return and the invoice management system
- Company filings: annual forms and the new small company threshold
- A single consolidated calendar
New sections, new forms, same rhythm
The Income-tax Act 2025 came into force on 1 April 2026. Withholding follows the date of payment or credit, not the year of the income, so the dividing line for a payables process is clean: paid or credited to 31 March 2026 is old Act, from 1 April 2026 is new Act.
| Concept | 1961 Act | 2025 Act |
|---|---|---|
| Withholding on salary | Section 192 | Section 392 |
| All other withholding | Sections 193 to 196D | Section 393, one table-driven provision with numeric payment codes |
| Tax collection at source | Section 206C | Section 394 |
| Tax audit | Section 44AB | Section 63 |
| Report on international transactions | Section 92E | Section 172 |
| Disallowance of unpaid dues to micro and small suppliers | Section 43B(h) | Section 37(2)(g), with the relief in section 37(3) expressly excluded for it |
Two 2025 changes that a older calendar will still be carrying. First, thresholds were raised across the board with effect from 1 April 2025: non-bank interest to ₹10,000, commission and brokerage to ₹20,000, professional and technical fees to ₹50,000, rent recast to ₹50,000 per month rather than an annual figure, and dividends to ₹10,000. Second, the higher-rate provisions for non-filers were omitted, so the compliance check that used to sit in front of every payment run has gone, and tax collection at source on the sale of goods was withdrawn.
The forms were renumbered under the Income-tax Rules 2026. The quarterly salary statement becomes Form 138, the quarterly statement for non-salary payments to resident deductees Form 140, the quarterly tax collection statement Form 143, the quarterly statement for non-salary payments to non-residents Form 144, the salary certificate Form 130 and the certificate for withholding other than salary Form 131. These applied from the first quarter of tax year 2026-27, covering April to June 2026; statements and corrections relating to FY 2025-26 and earlier stay on the old forms. Quarterly due dates are now uniform at 31 July, 31 October, 31 January and 31 May, with the tax collection date pulled forward from 15 July.
A rebuilt rate structure and a return you cannot edit
The 56th Council meeting on 3 September 2025 approved a two-rate structure of five and eighteen per cent with a separate forty per cent de-merit rate, effective 22 September 2025. The twelve and twenty-eight per cent slabs were withdrawn and individual life and health insurance policies were exempted. Any rate master, contract price or reverse-charge assumption built before that date needs revisiting.
The operational change that matters more to an outsourced payables process is where corrections now have to be made. Auto-populated outward tax liability in GSTR-3B has been non-editable from the July 2025 tax period. Corrections for the same period must be made through GSTR-1A before filing GSTR-3B. On the credit side, relevant fields in Table 4 are auto-populated from GSTR-2B, which reflects applicable Invoice Management System (IMS) actions, including deemed acceptance where no action is taken. Specified ITC fields remain editable, subject to portal warnings and validations and the statutory conditions for claiming credit. Monthly reconciliation of purchase records, IMS and GSTR-2B, together with timely vendor follow-up, therefore remains a key control.
| Return | Due date |
|---|---|
| Outward supplies statement | 11th of the following month for monthly filers; quarterly filers use the invoice furnishing facility by the 13th and pay by the 25th |
| Summary return and payment | 20th of the following month, with staggered 22nd and 24th dates for quarterly filers |
| Withholding and collection returns | 10th of the following month |
| Input service distributor return | 13th of the following month |
| Annual return | 31 December following the financial year. Mandatory above ₹2 crore aggregate turnover. |
| Annual reconciliation statement | 31 December following the financial year. Required above ₹5 crore. |
A hard three-year bar now applies to filing any return after its due date, so an arrears remediation project has an outer limit that did not previously exist.
Electronic invoicing applies at aggregate annual turnover above ₹5 crore. The separate thirty-day reporting limit, under which an invoice not reported within thirty days cannot obtain a reference number, applies from turnover of ₹10 crore with effect from 1 April 2025. That second one is the one that breaks a customer's credit and therefore your collections.
Annual forms, a widened definition, and a closing window
| Filing | Due date and note |
|---|---|
| Financial statements | Within 30 days of the annual general meeting. |
| Annual return | Within 60 days of the annual general meeting. The short form applies to one person companies and small companies. |
| Half-yearly return of dues to micro and small suppliers | 31 October for April to September; 30 April for October to March. See guide 4. |
| Limited liability partnership annual return | 30 May. |
| Limited liability partnership statement of account and solvency | 30 October. |
The small company definition was raised with effect from 1 December 2025 to paid-up share capital not exceeding ₹10 crore and turnover not exceeding ₹100 crore, from ₹4 crore and ₹40 crore. That single change moves a large number of companies into a lighter reporting regime, and it moves them without telling them. The statutory exclusions still apply: a holding or subsidiary company, a section 8 company, and a company governed by a special Act cannot be a small company however small its numbers.
Qualifying as a small company under the thresholds effective from 1 December 2025 does not exempt a company from audit trail requirements. Where it uses accounting software to maintain its books, Rule 3(1) of the Companies (Accounts) Rules, 2014 continues to apply, together with the auditor's reporting obligations under Rule 11(g) of the Companies (Audit and Auditors) Rules, 2014. Neither requirement provides a small-company exemption.
Where to go next
Accounts Outsourcing
Back to the main page: what we run, how a handover works, and how to reach us.
What an Outsourced Finance Function Actually Covers
Where the boundary sits between bookkeeping, controllership and finance leadership, what a handover looks like in practice, and the three failure modes that make outsourced finance go wrong.
Books of Account, the Audit Trail Rule and Where Your Data Must Live
What the Companies Act requires you to keep and for how long, the audit trail obligation and how your auditor reports on it, and the requirement that electronic books be backed up daily on servers physically in India.
Paying Suppliers: the MSME Payment Rule and What It Costs
The disallowance that turns a late supplier payment into a tax cost with no way back, the revised classification thresholds, the half-yearly return, and how to build accounts payable so the rule does not bite.
Choosing a Reporting Framework: Ind AS, AS, and the New Rules for LLPs and Firms
Which framework applies to your entity and why it is rarely a choice, the road map thresholds, and the change that gives limited liability partnerships and other non-corporate entities a prescribed format for the first time.
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Position as at 16 September 2026. Reviewed every six months.
This page is general information, not professional advice. Indian financial reporting and tax compliance moved substantially between September 2025 and June 2026. The Income-tax Act 2025 replaced the 1961 Act on 1 April 2026 and renumbered every section and every form; the goods and services tax rate structure was rebuilt on 22 September 2025; the small company definition changed on 1 December 2025; and prescribed financial statement formats began to apply to limited liability partnerships and other non-corporate entities. Take professional advice before acting on anything on this page. We are happy to be that adviser, but we do not act on a web page, ours or anyone else's, without one.