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The people’s newsroom

EconomyCorporate

Companies get until 31 December to file FY26 accounts without extra fees

The corporate affairs ministry has extended deadlines for financial statements and annual returns after company secretaries complained of repeated glitches on the MCA-21 portal.

From the editorial desk · New DelhiPublished
Shastri Bhawan, New Delhi (file photo)
Shastri Bhawan, New Delhi (file photo)Photo: Pinakpani / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Key points

  1. Companies can file FY26 financial statements on Form AOC-4 until 31 December 2026 without additional fees.
  2. The deadline for annual returns on Forms MGT-7 and MGT-7A moves to 31 January 2027.
  3. The relief does not extend the deadline for holding annual general meetings.

Companies will have until 31 December 2026 to file their financial statements for 2025-26 without paying any additional fee, after the Ministry of Corporate Affairs extended its annual filing deadlines in a circular dated 24 October.

The relief covers Form AOC-4, used to file financial statements with the Registrar of Companies, including its consolidated, XBRL and NBFC variants. Annual returns on Form MGT-7, and on MGT-7A, the shorter form for one-person and small companies, can now be filed by 31 January 2027, also without extra fees.

The circular does not move the statutory deadline for holding annual general meetings, so companies must still hold their AGMs on time even if the paperwork follows later.

Portal trouble

The ministry acted on representations from stakeholders seeking more time. The Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI) wrote on 9 October asking for an extension to 31 December without additional fees, citing recurring glitches on the MCA-21 V3 portal and heavier compliance demands in the revised filing forms.

The institute listed portal downtime, slow response, session timeouts, trouble with logins and profile updates, problems linking Digital Signature Certificates, and form validation failures.

ICSI President Pawan G Chandak said the aim was to make sure that “genuine compliance efforts are not adversely impacted by transitional or technological challenges.”

Not the first time

The ministry made a similar move last year. For 2024-25 filings it granted two extensions, through circulars dated 17 October 2025 and 30 December 2025.