If your company held its AGM by 30 September 2026, the ROC clock is already running. AOC-4 is due within 30 days of the AGM and MGT-7 within 60 days. Hold the AGM on the 30th and those dates land on 30 October and 29 November.
Two things catch people out. First, the deadline runs from your AGM date, not from 30 September — an early AGM means an early due date. Second, the late fee has no ceiling.
What each form is
- AOC-4 — the financial statements: balance sheet, profit and loss, notes, the directors' report and the auditor's report. Companies meeting the prescribed criteria file AOC-4 XBRL instead.
- MGT-7 — the annual return: shareholding, changes during the year, directors, meetings held. MGT-7A is the shorter version for small companies and OPCs.
- ADT-1 — auditor appointment, within 15 days of the AGM at which the auditor is appointed.
An OPC has no AGM. It files AOC-4 within 180 days of the year-end and MGT-7A after that. LLPs are on a different cycle altogether: Form 11 by 30 May and Form 8 by 30 October.
What you need ready
- Signed financial statements with the auditor's report and the board's approval.
- Directors' report, with the disclosures that apply to you — related-party transactions, loans and investments, deposits, and the AOC-2 annexure where applicable.
- AGM papers: notice, attendance, and minutes.
- Shareholding data as at 31 March 2026, with every transfer or allotment during the year traced to its PAS-3 or share transfer record.
- Board and committee meeting details — dates and attendance, which MGT-7 asks for directly.
- Active DSCs and DINs. Check the DIN status before you start. A deactivated DIN stops the filing dead, and DIR-3 KYC is now a once-in-three-years filing since 31 March 2026.
The cost of being late
- ₹100 per day, per form, with no upper limit. A six-month delay on both AOC-4 and MGT-7 is roughly ₹36,000 in additional fees alone.
- Director disqualification for five years where a company fails to file financial statements or annual returns for three consecutive years — and it applies to that person's directorships in other companies too.
- Strike-off proceedings by the Registrar for companies that stop filing.
A company that did no business this year still files. Dormant companies are usually the ones carrying the biggest accumulated late fees, because nobody felt there was anything to report.
Don't forget the smaller filings
- DPT-3 — return of deposits and outstanding loans, by 30 June.
- MSME-1 — half-yearly, where payments to micro and small suppliers are outstanding beyond the statutory period. The same ageing that drives your 43B(h) tax disallowance drives this return.
- Event-based forms — DIR-12 for director changes, PAS-3 for allotments, INC-22 for an office shift, CHG-1 for charges. Most run on a 30-day clock from the event, and these are the ones discovered a year later during due diligence.
How Vitt-Marg helps
We keep a filing calendar for every entity, prepare the AGM and board papers, and file the annual and event-based forms on time. Your statutory audit is signed by an independent practising Chartered Accountant — we coordinate with your auditor so the accounts are ready well before the AOC-4 date. If filings from earlier years are pending, we'll first work out the exposure and then file in the right order. More detail on the full year's calendar is on our ROC compliance page.
General information, current as of September 2026, not advice for a specific case. GST and income-tax rules change often — check with us before acting on it.