Statutory Compliances for Startups: A First-Year Founder's Checklist

Sep 4

40 min read

Authored by - Adv. Pranay Sawant, Senior Executive at Outsource360 Download any startup compliance checklist and you get the same page. Board meetings, AGM by 30 September, AOC-4 by 30 October, MGT-7 by 29 November, DIR-3 KYC by 30 September, income tax return by 31 October. Clean, confident, and for a company in its first year, almost entirely wrong.

Take a company incorporated on 20 January 2026. That list says its AOC-4 was due on 30 October 2026. It wasn't. The company's first financial year doesn't close until 31 March 2027, so there were no financial statements in existence to file. Its first annual general meeting isn't due until 31 December 2027, and its first annual return lands on 29 February 2028, more than two years after the certificate of incorporation was issued.

Meanwhile the dates that actually applied to that company in 2026 appear nowhere on the list. Its first board meeting was due by 19 February. Its first auditor had to be appointed by the same day. Share certificates were due by 20 March. And Form INC-20A, the filing without which the company could not lawfully commence business or borrow a rupee, was due on 19 July 2026.

Here's the thing about year one. It doesn't run on the annual calendar at all. It runs on clocks that start the moment the Registrar issues the certificate, and every one of them is measured in days from incorporation rather than from 31 March. Miss them and nothing arrives in the post. The company just accrues a liability that surfaces two years later, in a diligence data room, at the worst possible moment.

Four things also moved underneath the published checklists. Director KYC stopped being an annual filing on 31 March 2026 and became an intimation once every three years, which means the "DIR-3 KYC by 30 September" line still sitting on page one of Google has been wrong for over a year. Angel tax stopped applying from assessment year 2025-26, and a startling amount of published advice still tells founders to seek an exemption from a provision that no longer bites. The four labour codes came into force on 21 November 2025 and took twenty-nine central statutes with them, including the Payment of Gratuity Act and the Maternity Benefit Act. And the Income-tax Act, 2025 took effect on 1 April 2026, renumbering every section and renaming every TDS form in the process.

This is the first year rebuilt from the sections rather than copied from the last checklist. It covers what a private limited company owes from day zero to its first annual filing, where an LLP and a one person company diverge, what each miss costs as it compounds, and which items on the standard list are not statutory obligations at all.

A startup's first-year statutory compliances run on clocks measured from the date of incorporation, not from 31 March. The first board meeting and the first auditor are due within 30 days, share certificates within two months, and Form INC-20A within 180 days. The first financial year then closes on the 31 March following incorporation, the first annual general meeting falls within nine months of that close, and AOC-4 and MGT-7A follow 30 and 60 days after that meeting.

That is the spine. What follows is each obligation, the section it comes from, and the order the dates actually fall in.

On this page

Why a first-year compliance checklist is not the annual calendar
Day zero to day thirty: what a new company owes in its first month
Day thirty to day one hundred and eighty
Tax registration and compliance in year one
The compliance that starts when you hire your first employee
Closing year one: the audit, the first AGM and the first filings
If you incorporated an LLP or a one person company
What is on every checklist but is not actually statutory
What a missed first-year date actually costs
Running a first year without a full compliance team
- What genuinely needs a professional signature
- Build the calendar backwards from the incorporation date
Frequently asked questions

Why a first-year compliance checklist is not the annual calendar

Annual calendars are built backwards from 31 March. A first-year company has no completed 31 March behind it, so the whole structure is missing its anchor.

Three clocks start the day the certificate is issued

The certificate of incorporation is not a finish line. It's the starting gun on three separate periods that run in parallel, and a founder who treats the incorporation itself as the compliance event has already lost a month.

Thirty days covers the first board meeting under section 173(1) and the appointment of the first statutory auditor under section 139(6). Two months covers the delivery of share certificates to the subscribers under section 56(4)(a). One hundred and eighty days covers Form INC-20A under section 10A, the declaration that the subscribers have actually paid for their shares.

None of those appears on an annual calendar. Why would it? They happen once, in the first six months of a company's life, and never again.

The practical reality is that most founders meet the incorporation agent, receive the certificate, and hear nothing further until someone asks for a bank statement in month seven. The agent's engagement ended at the certificate. The company's obligations started there.

Your first financial year can run almost fifteen months

Section 2(41) defines the financial year as the period ending on 31 March each year, with one proviso that catches new companies: where a company is incorporated on or after 1 January of a year, its first financial year ends on 31 March of the following year.

That clause only does real work for a January, February or March incorporation. For everyone else both limbs land on the same date anyway. But for those three months the result is striking. A company incorporated on 2 January 2026 has a first financial year running to 31 March 2027, which is fourteen months and twenty-nine days long. A company incorporated on 20 December 2025 has a first financial year of three months and eleven days. Same statute, wildly different first years.

What does that change? Three things. The first audit covers the whole stretch rather than twelve months of it. The first income tax return covers it too. And a company incorporated in the January to March window has no annual filing at all in its first calendar year of existence, which is exactly the situation that makes a generic checklist dangerous rather than merely useless.

The first AGM gets nine months, and no extension

Section 96(1) requires every company other than a one person company to hold an annual general meeting. For a first AGM the proviso gives nine months from the date of closing of the first financial year, against six months for every year after that.

But the same section takes something away, and this is the most-missed provision on the whole first-year list. For any later AGM a company can ask the Registrar in Form GNL-1 for an extension of up to three months on special reasons. The statute expressly carves out the first one: the Registrar may extend the time for any annual general meeting "other than the first annual general meeting". Nine months, and not a day more, with no discretionary relief behind it.

Worth flagging: hold the first AGM inside those nine months and the company is not required to hold any AGM at all in its year of incorporation. That second proviso is what produces the two-year gap in the table below. And missing the meeting is not free. Section 99 attaches a fine of up to Rs 1,00,000 on the company and every officer in default, with a continuing fine of up to Rs 5,000 a day.

Here is what a whole first year looks like for two companies incorporated four months apart.

Obligation	Statutory trigger	Incorporated 20 January 2026	Incorporated 12 May 2026
First board meeting	Within 30 days of incorporation, section 173(1)	19 February 2026	11 June 2026
First auditor appointed by the Board	Within 30 days of registration, section 139(6)	19 February 2026	11 June 2026
Share certificates delivered to subscribers	Within 2 months of incorporation, section 56(4)(a)	20 March 2026	12 July 2026
Form INC-20A	Within 180 days of incorporation, section 10A	19 July 2026	8 November 2026
First financial year closes	31 March following incorporation, section 2(41)	31 March 2027, a 14-month year	31 March 2027, a 10-month year
First annual general meeting	Within 9 months of that close, section 96(1)	31 December 2027	31 December 2027
AOC-4, financial statements	Within 30 days of the AGM, section 137	30 January 2028	30 January 2028
MGT-7A, annual return	Within 60 days of the AGM, section 92	29 February 2028	29 February 2028

Two companies, four months apart, with identical annual filing deadlines and completely different first-half obligations. The last three rows assume the AGM is held on the final permitted day, which is the worst way to run it and the most common.

Day zero to day thirty: what a new company owes in its first month

Month one is where the paperwork is cheapest to get right and most expensive to fix later. Almost none of it costs money. All of it gets asked for eventually.

The first board meeting, and the two declarations signed at it

Section 173(1) requires the first meeting of the Board within thirty days of the date of incorporation. After that the default is at least four board meetings a year with no more than one hundred and twenty days between two consecutive meetings.

Most startups don't run on the default. Section 173(5) relaxes it for a one person company, a small company, a dormant company, and a private company that qualifies as a start-up: one meeting in each half of the calendar year, with a gap of at least ninety days between the two. And since the small company thresholds moved to Rs 10 crore of paid-up capital and Rs 100 crore of turnover on 1 December 2025, almost every first-year company qualifies on that route alone.

Two declarations belong on the agenda. Form MBP-1 is each director's disclosure of interest in other entities under section 184(1), given at the first board meeting the director participates in, again at the first board meeting of every financial year, and again after any change. Form DIR-8 is the director's declaration of non-disqualification under rule 14(1), and the rule requires it before appointment or reappointment rather than annually, although filing it every year is common practice. Neither goes to the Registrar. Both live in the company's own records, and MBP-1 disclosures have to be preserved for eight years.

The penalty for getting MBP-1 wrong is worth knowing, because the version circulating online is repealed. Section 184(4) now carries a flat penalty of Rs 1,00,000 on the director alone. No imprisonment, no company liability. Plenty of otherwise reliable sites still show the old imprisonment-or-fine text as though it were live.

So what happens if thirty days pass with no meeting? Nothing visible. And that's the trap, because the minute book is a continuous record and a gap at the start of it never goes away.

The first auditor, and the ADT-1 question nobody answers straight

Section 139(6) puts the first auditor on the Board, not the shareholders. The Board appoints within thirty days of the date of registration. If it fails, the members must appoint within ninety days at an extraordinary general meeting. Either way the first auditor holds office until the conclusion of the first annual general meeting.

Now, the question every founder gets a different answer to: does Form ADT-1 have to be filed for the first auditor?

Read the rule and the answer is no. Rule 4(2) of the Companies (Audit and Auditors) Rules, 2014 says the notice to the Registrar about appointment of an auditor "under fourth proviso to sub-section (1) of section 139" shall be in Form ADT-1. A section 139(6) first-auditor appointment sits outside section 139(1) entirely, and section 139(6) says nothing about any filing. The Institute of Company Secretaries of India reaches the same conclusion in its own FAQ, and then recommends filing anyway. It asked the Ministry of Corporate Affairs to clarify the point in April 2026 and has not been answered.

Two practical reasons the market files regardless. AOC-4 validates against an ADT-1 service request number, so a missing ADT-1 creates a downstream problem at the first annual filing. And a diligence lawyer who finds no ADT-1 will ask about it whether or not the rule required one.

Our recommendation is to file it. Not because the rule demands it, but because the downside is asymmetric: an unnecessary form costs a few hundred rupees, and a missing one costs an explanation you will give repeatedly for years. Also worth noting, because it's genuinely useful right now: ADT-1 is one of the forms covered by the amnesty scheme described later in this article.

Fair warning about one widely repeated claim. A notification of 30 May 2025 is regularly described as having made ADT-1 mandatory for first auditors. It did not. It amended a different rule and substituted forms, and rule 4(2) was left untouched.

The registered office, and when INC-22 is still needed

Section 12(1) requires a company to have a registered office capable of receiving communications within thirty days of its incorporation and at all times afterwards. The old "fifteenth day" wording was amended out in 2018, and a surprising number of reference sites still show the superseded version.

Most companies now declare the address inside SPICe+ at incorporation, which discharges the section 12(2) verification obligation at the same time and makes a separate Form INC-22 unnecessary. If the address was not declared, INC-22 is due within thirty days. Note the two document limits that catch people out: a rent receipt may not be older than one month, and a utility bill may not be older than two months.

Section 12(8) prices a default at Rs 1,000 for every day it continues, capped at Rs 1,00,000, on the company and on every officer in default. Section 12(9) lets the Registrar physically verify the registered office and, if it isn't capable of receiving communications, start the process of striking the company off.

A co-working desk can be a valid registered office. A friend's flat where nobody collects post cannot, at least not safely, and the Registrar now turns up to look.

One correction while we're here, because it has spread widely. There is no verified public notice decommissioning the legacy MCA21 V2 portal on 30 June 2026. What is verifiable is that company e-filings on V2 were disabled on 18 June 2025, that the final batch of thirty-eight company forms went live on V3 on 14 July 2025, and that legacy V2 links now return a notice saying they may no longer be valid. V2 is retired. The specific date doing the rounds is not supported by anything on the Ministry's own site.

The bank account that gates everything downstream

This one isn't a filing, which is exactly why it gets left off compliance checklists and why it derails more first-year timelines than any actual form.

INC-20A cannot be filed until every subscriber has paid the full value of the shares they subscribed for, and that payment has to land in an account in the company's name. So the sequence is fixed: account opened, subscription money transferred by each subscriber from their own account, proof obtained, INC-20A filed. Lose six weeks on the account and you have spent six weeks of a one hundred and eighty day budget on a step that isn't even a compliance obligation.

Banks treat a newly incorporated company as a high-risk onboarding. Expect to produce the certificate of incorporation, the memorandum and articles, a board resolution authorising the account, PAN, and KYC on every director and every beneficial owner. Two to four weeks is normal. We'd start it the week the certificate arrives.

Day thirty to day one hundred and eighty

The second stretch is shorter on meetings and longer on consequences. Both of the genuinely expensive first-year mistakes live here.

Share certificates in two months, and the stamp duty question nobody settles

Section 56(4)(a) requires a company to deliver share certificates to the subscribers to the memorandum within two months of incorporation. Not issue them notionally. Deliver them. The certificate itself is Form SH-1, signed by two directors, or by a director and the company secretary.

Section 56(6) sets the price of failure at Rs 50,000 on the company and Rs 50,000 on every officer in default. Flat, no per-day component, no ambiguity about who pays. Note that this is the current text: the older provision was a court-imposed fine running from Rs 25,000 to Rs 5,00,000, it was replaced with a penalty adjudicated by the Registrar in December 2020, and several widely used reference sites still serve the repealed version as though it were operative.

Then there's stamp duty, and here the honest answer is less tidy than most articles pretend. Duty is payable on the share certificates themselves under Article 19 of the Indian Stamp Act, 1899, at rates fixed by each state in its own schedule. There is no uniform national rate, so any single figure quoted in a general article is worse than no figure at all. The "within thirty days of issue" deadline that appears everywhere has no statutory basis we could verify. What the statute actually says, in section 17, is that instruments must be stamped before or at the time of execution. Treat thirty days as an administrative convention that some state authorities apply, not as law, and confirm your own state's position before you issue.

There is also live litigation worth knowing about if you are incorporating in Delhi. Revenue directives issued in 2025 demand stamp duty at 0.1 percent on share issuances under the state article, against the 0.005 percent applied under the central regime for dematerialised issues. At least one company has been assessed a sum in crores including penalty. Writ petitions are pending before the Delhi High Court and there is no final ruling.

Is this the item founders miss most? In our experience, yes, and by a wide margin. It produces nothing at the time and surfaces in the first serious diligence exercise, where an unstamped share certificate is treated as inadmissible evidence of title.

INC-20A: the filing that decides whether you may legally trade

Section 10A applies to every company incorporated with share capital on or after 2 November 2018. Within one hundred and eighty days of incorporation, a director has to file a declaration in Form INC-20A confirming that every subscriber has paid the value of the shares they agreed to take. The declaration is verified by a company secretary, chartered accountant or cost accountant in practice, so this is not a form a founder files alone.

Until it is filed, the company cannot commence any business and cannot exercise any borrowing powers. Read that as written. A company trading without INC-20A is operating outside the authority the Act gives it, which is a different and worse problem than a late form.

The penalty runs on two tracks. The company is liable to Rs 50,000. Every officer in default is liable to Rs 1,000 for each day the default continues, up to Rs 1,00,000. In one reported adjudication a delay of about a hundred days produced roughly Rs 3.5 lakh in total across the company and three directors.

And section 10A(3) adds a third consequence that has nothing to do with money. Where the declaration has not been filed within one hundred and eighty days and the Registrar has reasonable cause to believe the company is not carrying on business, the Registrar may initiate action to remove its name from the register. A struck-off company is not a company with a fine attached. It is a company that has to be restored by application to the National Company Law Tribunal before it can do anything at all.

The registers and minute books that never reach the Registrar

Section 88 requires a register of members in Form MGT-1, a register of debenture holders and other security holders in Form MGT-2, and separate provisions require a register of directors and key managerial personnel and a register of charges in Form CHG-7. Section 118 requires minutes of every board meeting and every general meeting to be prepared, signed and entered in the minute book within thirty days of the meeting, consecutively numbered, and kept at the registered office.

None of these is filed anywhere. All of them are produced on demand, and the penalties are not small. Failure to maintain the register of members costs Rs 3,00,000 for the company and Rs 50,000 for every officer in default. The register of directors carries Rs 50,000 plus Rs 500 a day under section 172, capped at Rs 3,00,000 for the company. Minute book defaults are cheaper at Rs 25,000 and Rs 5,000, but tampering with minutes carries imprisonment of up to two years.

Two things founders rarely realise. Secretarial Standards SS-1 and SS-2 on board and general meetings are statutorily mandatory under section 118(10), and they apply to private companies, so the format of your minutes is not a matter of taste. And there is no portal that turns red when a register goes unmaintained. The reckoning comes in a diligence round, where a two-year-old company producing a complete minute book reads as competently run and one producing a folder of PDFs does not. The mistake we see most often is reconstructing eighteen months of minutes over a weekend, which is both obvious and, for a register of members, close to impossible to do convincingly.

Tax registration and compliance in year one

Company law gives you deadlines measured in days from incorporation. Tax law gives you deadlines measured from transactions, which is why a company with no revenue can still be in default.

PAN, TAN, and what SPICe+ already did for you

PAN and TAN are both allotted through SPICe+ Part B, the incorporation form itself, and both are printed on the certificate of incorporation. There is no separate Form 49A or 49B to file.

A common misreading is worth clearing up, because it changes what a founder thinks is already done. The linked form AGILE-PRO-S does not cover PAN or TAN. What it covers is GST registration, ESIC registration, EPFO registration, profession tax registration in the applicable states, a bank account, and shops and establishment registration. Those are opt-in boxes at incorporation, plenty of founders leave them unticked, and then assume the registrations exist anyway.

Check the certificate. If a registration you need isn't on it, you don't have it.

TDS: the monthly obligation most first-year startups find out about late

Here's what catches pre-revenue companies. Tax deduction at source is triggered by payments you make, not by revenue you earn. Office rent above the threshold, professional fees to your own chartered accountant, contractor payments to a developer, commission, and salaries once anyone is on payroll all attract TDS from the first rupee of qualifying spend.

Deducted tax must be deposited by the seventh of the following month, with one exception: for March the deadline is 30 April. Quarterly statements are due on 31 July, 31 October, 31 January, and 31 May for the final quarter.

But one thing changed on 1 April 2026 that almost every published guide still gets wrong. The Income-tax Act, 2025 renumbered the forms. Form 24Q became Form 138, Form 26Q became Form 140, Form 27Q became Form 144, and Form 27EQ became Form 143. Form 16 is now Form 130 and Form 16A is Form 131. The dates survived the transition. The form numbers and the section references did not, so an article citing "Form 24Q" or "section 194J" for tax year 2026-27 is quoting a repealed statute.

Late filing of a quarterly statement costs Rs 200 for each day the failure continues, capped at the amount of tax deductible in that statement, and it has to be paid before the statement can be filed. Interest runs separately: one percent a month where tax was deductible and not deducted, one and a half percent a month where it was deducted and not paid across.

Bottom line: put a TDS check in front of vendor payments and payroll before the first invoice is paid, not after the first quarter closes.

GST: registration is a trigger, not a threshold

The turnover thresholds get all the attention and they are the least useful part of the rule for a startup. Rs 40 lakh for a supplier dealing exclusively in goods, Rs 20 lakh for services, lower in special category states.

What actually catches new companies is compulsory registration, which applies regardless of turnover. Making an inter-state taxable supply, supplying through an e-commerce operator that collects tax at source, being liable under reverse charge, acting as an agent, or being a casual or non-resident taxable person all force registration from rupee one. A software company in Bengaluru billing a client in Mumbai has made an inter-state supply on its first invoice.

That said, a services business making inter-state supplies gets specific relief up to Rs 20 lakh under a notification issued under section 23(2), which is why this rule is genuinely confusing rather than merely detailed. We've set out when GST registration becomes compulsory, and the application route, separately.

Advance tax, the first return, and the tax-year switch

Advance tax applies to a company like anyone else. If tax payable for the year, net of TDS and TCS, comes to Rs 10,000 or more, the full schedule applies: fifteen percent by 15 June, forty-five percent by 15 September, seventy-five percent by 15 December, and the balance by 15 March.

There is no first-year exemption for companies. The only softening in the Act applies where business income accrues for the first time, in which case the instalments falling due before that income arises don't attract the shortfall interest, provided the tax is paid in the remaining instalments or by 31 March. That relief covers one of the two interest provisions, not both.

The return is Form ITR-6, due 31 October. The reason matters, because most guides get it backwards: a company files by 31 October because it is a company, not because a tax audit applies to it. A company with no audit obligation and no income at all still files by 31 October. A transfer-pricing case moves to 30 November.

Nor is filing optional at zero income. The obligation attaches to the entity, not to the profit, so a loss-making first-year startup that skips its return picks up a late-filing fee of Rs 5,000, reduced to Rs 1,000 where total income doesn't exceed Rs 5 lakh, which is where most first-year companies sit.

Tax audit is a separate question. It bites above Rs 1 crore of turnover, or above Rs 10 crore where both cash receipts and cash payments stay at or under five percent of the total. A detail most content omits: for that test, a payment by a cheque that is not account payee counts as cash. The audit report is due one month before the return, so 30 September for a company.

And one framing point about the year this is written in. The Income-tax Act, 2025 received assent on 21 August 2025 and took effect on 1 April 2026, replacing the 1961 Act and abolishing both "previous year" and "assessment year" in favour of a single "tax year". Income for FY 2025-26 is still assessed under the old Act. A company incorporated on or after 1 April 2026 lives entirely under the new one, with a short first tax year running from incorporation to 31 March 2027.

The compliance that starts when you hire your first employee

None of this applies to a company with no employees. All of it applies from the day the first one joins, and the triggers are headcounts, not revenue.

The whole area moved on 21 November 2025, when the four labour codes came into force and twenty-nine central labour statutes were subsumed into them. So a checklist citing the Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972 or the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961 is citing law that no longer exists. The rights survived. The statutes did not.

Shops and establishments, and professional tax

Shops and establishments registration is state law, and the "within thirty days" line every generic checklist prints is only sometimes right.

Karnataka gives thirty days from the day the establishment commences work, under section 4 of its 1961 Act. Haryana also gives thirty days, under section 13 of the Punjab Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1958, which still applies there. Maharashtra gives sixty days under section 6 of its 2017 Act, and only establishments with ten or more workers register at all: below that, section 7 requires an intimation instead. Delhi gives ninety days under section 5 of its 1954 Act.

Four states, four answers. Look up yours rather than trusting a national figure. And note that the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code repealed thirteen central Acts and not one state shops and establishments Act, so these registrations survive the codes intact.

Professional tax is the other state levy, and the surprise runs the other way. It's a tax on employment, capped at Rs 2,500 a year per person by Article 276(2) of the Constitution, and roughly twenty states and union territories levy it. Haryana does not, so a Gurugram payroll carries no professional tax deduction at all. Punjab does, under a 2018 Act that calls it a development tax rather than a professional tax, which is precisely why it gets left off lists. Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand do not levy it.

EPF and ESI: the headcount triggers

Two thresholds, and both count employees rather than payroll value.

Obligation	Trigger	Wage ceiling	Rate or entitlement
Provident fund	20 or more employees; voluntary below that	Rs 15,000 a month	12 percent employer and 12 percent employee, plus 0.5 percent employer for life insurance cover
Employees' State Insurance	10 or more employees, 20 in Maharashtra and Chandigarh; one worker in a hazardous process	Rs 21,000 a month, Rs 25,000 for an employee with a disability	3.25 percent employer and 0.75 percent employee
Gratuity	10 or more employees on any day in the preceding twelve months	Notified ceiling, currently Rs 20 lakh	After five years of continuous service, one year for a fixed-term employee
Maternity benefit	10 or more employees; creche obligation at 50	Not applicable	26 weeks for the first two children, 12 weeks thereafter

Cross a threshold and you stay covered even if headcount later falls back below it. Registration now runs under the Code on Social Security in Form-I on the Shram Suvidha portal, though EPFO and ESIC remain the administering bodies and their own portals are still where the monthly contributions go.

The provident fund wage ceiling deserves its own sentence, because it's widely misreported. It is Rs 15,000, and it was affirmatively re-notified at Rs 15,000 on 29 May 2026. There is a live proposal to raise it, and the figure in that proposal is Rs 25,000, not the Rs 21,000 that circulates in compliance articles. It has not been notified. Budget for Rs 15,000 and watch the gazette.

Two mechanics worth having. ESI contributions are due within fifteen days of the end of the month. Provident fund now runs under the Employees' Provident Funds Scheme, 2026, which came into force on 1 July 2026 and replaced the 1952 scheme, and delayed payment attracts interest at twelve percent a year.

POSH: the committee that has to exist on paper and in fact

Section 4(1) of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 requires every employer of a workplace to constitute an Internal Committee by an order in writing. Read the section and you'll find no headcount in it at all. The ten-worker line everybody quotes comes from section 6(1), which has the District Officer constitute a Local Committee for establishments where an Internal Committee has not been constituted because there are fewer than ten workers.

The composition is prescriptive, and it's where small companies fail. The presiding officer must be a woman employed at a senior level among the employees. There must be at least two more members from among the employees. There must be one member from a non-governmental organisation or a person familiar with issues relating to sexual harassment, and the employer pays that member's fees. At least half the nominated members must be women. In practice that means a minimum of four people, one of them external, appointed for a term not exceeding three years.

The committee prepares an annual report each calendar year and submits it to the employer and to the District Officer. Failure to constitute the committee attracts a fine of up to Rs 50,000, and a subsequent conviction for the same offence carries twice the punishment plus cancellation or non-renewal of the employer's licence or registration.

A 2026 addition most checklists have not caught up with: registration on the government's SHe-Box portal is now treated as compulsory following a Ministry of Women and Child Development public notice, with committee members, the presiding officer and the nodal officer all registered. The POSH Act was not among the statutes subsumed by the labour codes, so it stands exactly as it did.

What the labour codes changed, and what they didn't

The central rules under all four codes were finalised in May 2026. State rules are a patchier picture: only a minority of states have completed all four sets, professional trackers disagree on the count, and several large industrial states are still working from drafts. Until a state notifies, the old rules and schemes continue under a savings provision that runs to 20 November 2026.

For a first-year company the practical effect is narrower than the headlines suggest. The headcount triggers did not move. What moved is the statute you cite, the base on which provident fund is calculated (the code's definition of wages, with its fifty percent deeming rule, rather than "basic wages" under the old Act), and the registration channel. We've set out what the four labour codes actually changed in detail.

One live oddity is worth knowing about. The Employees' Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 was expressly held back from the November 2025 repeal while the scheme made under it was replaced, which leaves provident fund sitting across two layers of law. It changes nothing about what you pay. It does mean that anyone telling you the 1952 Act is definitively repealed, or definitively alive, is more confident than the gazette supports.

Closing year one: the audit, the first AGM and the first filings

Everything in this section is sequential. Each step is blocked by the one before it, which is why a company that starts in month eleven is already late.

The audit has to finish before anything else can start

The first auditor appointed back in month one audits the whole first financial year, however long it turned out to be. The Board then approves the audited financial statements, the notice of the annual general meeting goes out with twenty-one clear days, the meeting happens, and only then do the filing clocks start.

Work backwards from the nine-month deadline and the real cut-off is earlier than it looks. For a first financial year ending 31 March 2027, the AGM is due by 31 December 2027, notice has to be out by early December, board approval by late November, and the audit signed before that. A founder who calls the auditor in November has left no room at all, and the first AGM is the one meeting the Registrar cannot extend.

AOC-4, MGT-7A, and why the sequence is forced

AOC-4 carries the financial statements and is due within thirty days of the annual general meeting under section 137. The annual return follows within sixty days of the meeting under section 92. Most first-year startups file the abridged MGT-7A rather than the full MGT-7, because MGT-7A is available to one person companies and small companies, and the small company thresholds moved to Rs 10 crore of paid-up capital and Rs 100 crore of turnover on 1 December 2025.

Both dates hang off the meeting, not off 31 March. Move the meeting forward and both filings move with it, which is the cheapest compliance decision a small company can make and costs nothing. One current mechanic to plan for: since 14 July 2025 the annual filing forms require a geotagged photograph of the registered office with at least one director visible, so somebody has to physically be there.

From here the company joins the ordinary annual cycle, and the first-year clocks stop mattering. We've mapped the annual cycle those dates settle into separately.

DPT-3, MSME-1 and DIR-3 KYC in a first year

Three filings that generic checklists list without ever explaining whether a first-year company is actually caught by them.

DPT-3 is the annual return of deposits and exempted receipts, due by 30 June each year for balances as at 31 March. The majority position is that a first-year company whose only receipt is subscription money that has been allotted has nothing to report: once allotted, the money is share capital, not an outstanding receipt. The analysis breaks the moment there is a director's loan, a convertible note, an inter-corporate loan, or share application money still pending allotment at 31 March, all of which are common in year one and all of which are reportable. And there's a trap inside the trap: application money not allotted within sixty days of receipt, and not refunded within fifteen days after that, becomes a deposit. Non-filing costs Rs 5,000 plus Rs 500 a day.

MSME-1 is half-yearly, due 31 October and 30 April, and it is triggered only where payments to micro or small enterprise suppliers run past forty-five days. Medium enterprises are outside it entirely. No return is needed where every payment was inside forty-five days. The penalty is Rs 20,000 plus Rs 1,000 a day, capped at Rs 3,00,000, on the company and on each officer in default.

DIR-3 KYC is where a first-year founder will get a straight answer nowhere, so here is the honest version. The rule changed with effect from 31 March 2026: director KYC is now a single Form DIR-3 KYC Web filed by 30 June of every third consecutive financial year, not annually by 30 September. Directors already compliant are widely reported as next due on 30 June 2028. But the substituted rule contains no proviso at all for a DIN allotted in the current year, and professional commentary gives three different answers about when a new director's first KYC falls due. The Ministry has issued no clarification. Ask your own professional, get the answer in writing, and diarise the earliest of the possible dates. A late or missed filing deactivates the DIN and costs Rs 5,000 to reactivate.

If you incorporated an LLP or a one person company

Both are simpler, and both are simpler in different ways, which is why a single generic checklist serves neither.

A one person company is a company, so almost everything above applies: INC-20A, the first auditor, share certificates, statutory registers. What it does not do is hold an annual general meeting, because section 96 exempts it. Its filing dates are therefore fixed rather than derived. AOC-4 is due within one hundred and eighty days of the close of the financial year, and MGT-7A follows on its own clock. An OPC with a single director also sits outside the board meeting quorum requirements.

An LLP is not a company at all, and its first year looks nothing like the table earlier in this article. There is no INC-20A, no share certificate, no statutory auditor within thirty days, and no AGM. What there is:

Form 3, the LLP agreement, within thirty days of incorporation.
Form 11, the annual return, by 30 May. Designated partners can certify it themselves where turnover is Rs 5 crore or less and contribution is Rs 50 lakh or less; above either, a practising company secretary certifies.
Form 8, the statement of account and solvency, by 30 October.
An audit only once turnover exceeds Rs 40 lakh or contribution exceeds Rs 25 lakh.

The first-year quirk is different too. An LLP incorporated after 30 September of a year may end its first financial year on the following 31 March, which is an option rather than a requirement. An LLP that keeps the short first year has to file Form 11 and Form 8 for it.

And one correction, because this error is close to universal. LLP late filing is not "Rs 100 per day with no cap". There are two separate charges. The additional filing fee is a multiplier of the normal fee on a sliding scale that runs to fifteen times for a small LLP and thirty times for others. Separately, the statutory penalty under sections 34(5) and 35(2) is Rs 100 a day, and it is capped, at Rs 1,00,000 for the LLP and Rs 50,000 for every designated partner. A small or start-up LLP has even that halved.

What is on every checklist but is not actually statutory

This is the line no page on this subject draws, and drawing it changes how a founder spends the first year's budget. Three of the most commonly listed "compliances" are not obligations at all. They're good decisions, which is a different thing, and knowing which is which tells you what can wait.

Trademark registration in India is optional, and founders still file in month one

There is no provision in the Trade Marks Act, 1999 requiring a business to register its brand name or logo, and nothing in company law ties incorporation to a trademark. So trademark registration in India is not a statutory compliance, and any checklist that files it alongside INC-20A is miscategorising it.

It still belongs in the first year, for a reason that has nothing to do with compliance. A name approved by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs is not brand protection. The MCA and the Trade Marks Registry are separate authorities applying separate tests to separate databases. Incorporating "Meridian Analytics Private Limited" gives you a company name. It does not stop a competitor selling analytics software under the name Meridian, and it does not stop the Registry refusing your later application over an earlier mark the MCA never checked.

Three practical points that decide the timing. A word mark protects the name itself in any typeface or colour; a device mark protects the artwork. File a logo only and a rebrand eighteen months later leaves you protecting artwork you no longer use, which is why most founders file the word mark first and add the device mark when the identity settles. Trademark classes are chosen by the goods and services you actually supply, not by your industry, so a single business often needs more than one. And section 34 of the Act preserves the rights of a prior continuous user, which means the first filer does not automatically beat the first user.

The trigger for filing isn't revenue. It's sunk brand spend. Once money has gone into packaging, signage or a paid campaign, walking away from the name has a price attached. If you want the procedure, the classes, the official fees and the deadlines that end applications, we've set out how trademark registration in India actually works in full.

One thing that is not optional, though: using the registered symbol on an unregistered mark is an offence. The TM symbol carries no such restriction.

The shareholders' agreement, founder vesting and the IP assignment

No statute requires a shareholders' agreement. No statute requires founder shares to vest. And no statute requires the developer who wrote your codebase, or the designer who drew your logo, to assign the copyright to the company.

That last one is the expensive gap. Under Indian copyright law, work done by an independent contractor generally belongs to the contractor unless it has been assigned in writing. A company that has been running for two years on a codebase it does not own discovers this in the first diligence round, and the contractor's negotiating position at that moment is excellent.

Founder vesting is the other one. Two founders split equity fifty-fifty at incorporation, one leaves in month eight, and the company now has a departed founder holding half the cap table with no mechanism to claw it back. Nothing in the Companies Act prevents that. Only the articles and a shareholders' agreement do. We've covered which agreements a growing company actually needs and when each one applies.

DPIIT recognition is not statutory, and it halves your penalties

Recognition under the Startup India framework is voluntary. It's also the single highest-return optional item on this list, and the reason is buried in the Companies Act rather than in any startup scheme.

Section 446B provides that where a penalty is payable for non-compliance by a one person company, a small company, a start-up company or a producer company, the penalty is not more than one half of the amount specified, subject to a maximum of Rs 2,00,000 for the company and Rs 1,00,000 for an officer in default. The Act defines a start-up company by reference to the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade notification. Recognition, in other words, halves the penalty limb across the statute. Section 173(5) also relaxes the board meeting requirement for a private company that is a start-up.

The definition itself was replaced on 4 February 2026. The standard test is now up to ten years from incorporation with turnover under Rs 200 crore, and a new DeepTech category runs to twenty years and Rs 300 crore. Cooperative societies were added to the eligible entity types.

Two corrections about what recognition does and doesn't do. It does not by itself give you the section 80-IAC tax holiday: that needs a separate Inter-Ministerial Board certificate, it is available only to a private limited company or LLP, and opting into the twenty-two percent concessional corporate tax rate forfeits it irrevocably, so take the holiday years first. And recognition is no longer the route to an angel tax exemption, because angel tax stopped applying from assessment year 2025-26. What replaced that exposure is section 68 on unexplained cash credits, where the burden is identity, creditworthiness and genuineness of the investor, and the tax rate on failure is sixty percent. Any advice telling you to seek a DPIIT angel tax exemption before a round is obsolete. We've set out what DPIIT recognition is actually worth in full.

Here is the whole first year sorted by whether the law compels it.

Statutory, unconditional	Statutory, but only on a trigger	Not statutory, still worth doing
First board meeting, first auditor, share certificates, INC-20A, statutory registers and minutes, first AGM, AOC-4, MGT-7A, income tax return	GST on compulsory-registration triggers or turnover, TDS on qualifying payments, EPF at 20 employees, ESI at 10, POSH committee, shops and establishments on commencement, professional tax by state, MSME-1 on late payment, DPT-3 on reportable balances	Trademark registration, shareholders' agreement, founder vesting, IP assignment from contractors, DPIIT recognition, a written employment contract

The middle column is where most first-year defaults happen, because a trigger obligation is invisible until the trigger fires and nobody is watching for it.

What a missed first-year date actually costs

Two things founders get wrong about penalties. They assume a single charge, and they assume somebody tells you. Neither is true.

The additional fee runs before anyone adjudicates

For AOC-4 and the annual return, section 403 sets an additional fee of Rs 100 per day, per form, running from the due date with no upper limit at all. That is not a penalty. It is the price of the filing itself going up every day, and it applies whether or not anybody has noticed.

Late on both forms means Rs 200 a day. Ninety days late is Rs 18,000. A year late is around Rs 73,000. Two years is roughly Rs 146,000, on a company that may never have traded. The old two-hundred-and-seventy-day window that some articles still mention was deleted in 2018, so there is no grace period behind it.

There is a live relief worth acting on if any of this describes you. The Companies Compliance Facilitation Scheme, 2026 lets a defaulting company clear pending annual filings at ten percent of the accumulated additional fee, a ninety percent waiver. It was extended on 31 August 2026 and closes on 15 September 2026. ADT-1 is covered; charge forms are not. If your company has unfiled AOC-4, MGT-7 or ADT-1 forms behind it, this is worth a phone call today rather than next month.

Where the penalty limb starts, and where section 446B halves it

The penalty is a separate bill from the additional fee, and it arrives through adjudication rather than through the portal.

Section 92(5) sets a penalty of Rs 10,000 plus Rs 100 for each day of continuing default for a late annual return, capped at Rs 2,00,000 for the company and Rs 50,000 for each officer in default. Section 137(3) does the same for the financial statements, with the officer limb attaching to the managing director and chief financial officer where there are any. Both are per section, so a company late on both pays twice, on top of the additional fee it already owes.

Then section 446B halves it. A one person company, a small company or a DPIIT-recognised start-up company pays not more than half the specified penalty, capped at Rs 2,00,000 for the company and Rs 1,00,000 for an officer. That single provision is the strongest quantified argument for getting recognised in year one, and it is missing from essentially every first-year checklist on the first page of Google.

The two consequences that outlive the money

Money is the least of it. Two consequences attach to people and to the company's existence, and neither can be paid off later.

Three continuous financial years without filing financial statements or annual returns disqualifies every director of that period for five years under section 164(2). Not just in the defaulting company. In every company they sit on the board of. A founder who let a dormant side entity go quiet can find themselves unable to serve on the board of the company that actually matters.

And the Registrar can strike the company off. Under section 10A(3) for an unfiled INC-20A, under section 12(9) where the registered office cannot receive communications, or under section 248 where the company has not carried on business for two financial years. Restoration is an application to the National Company Law Tribunal, with the cost and the delay that implies.

The third consequence never appears in a statute. It shows up in the data room. An acquirer's counsel who finds a clean minute book, stamped share certificates and complete filings prices the company one way. One who finds gaps prices in an indemnity, an escrow, or a discount. That is usually the largest number on this page, and no penalty schedule contains it.

Running a first year without a full compliance team

Almost no first-year company has anyone whose job this is. That's normal, and it's survivable, provided the work is designed rather than remembered.

What genuinely needs a professional signature

Less than founders assume, and more than they hope.

INC-20A has to be verified by a company secretary, chartered accountant or cost accountant in practice. The statutory audit is a chartered accountant's exclusive territory. The financial statements and the annual return need professional certification depending on size. Above the small-company thresholds, more of the ROC forms need pre-certification.

Everything else is process rather than expertise. Holding a board meeting on time, keeping minutes within thirty days, collecting MBP-1 and DIR-8, delivering share certificates, opening the bank account, deducting TDS on a vendor payment: none of that requires a professional. It requires somebody to own the calendar.

That is the honest split, and it's why the usual advice to "hire a company secretary from day one" is more expensive than the problem. A retainer that covers the certified filings, combined with an internal owner for the process items, does the same job for a fraction of the cost. What doesn't work is assuming the incorporation agent is still watching. They aren't; their engagement ended at the certificate.

Build the calendar backwards from the incorporation date

Take the date on the certificate and put six entries in a shared calendar before you do anything else: incorporation plus 30 days, plus 60 days, plus 180 days, the 31 March that closes your first financial year, and that date plus nine months. Then add the monthly TDS date, the quarterly TDS date, and the GST dates if you're registered.

That is the entire first year in eight recurring reminders. Every deadline in this article falls out of one of them, and the compounding failures (the missed INC-20A, the AGM that could not be extended) all come from the first four.

A smarter strategy than working to the deadline is working to the deadline minus thirty. Hold the first AGM in October rather than the last day of December and you have converted a scramble into a schedule, moved out of the queue that forms at every window's end, and bought clear weeks of slack before any additional fee can start running. The audit has to be finished either way. The only thing that changes is when you stop being exposed.

If keeping a first-year compliance calendar in one head is pulling you away from building the business, Outsource360 handles company registration and compliance as a managed service, with outsourced legal support and tax registration and compliance under one roof. Book a consultation if it would help to talk it through.

Frequently asked questions

What are the statutory compliances for a startup in the first year?

For a private limited company: the first board meeting and the appointment of the first auditor within thirty days of incorporation, share certificates to subscribers within two months, Form INC-20A within one hundred and eighty days, statutory registers and minute books maintained throughout, the first annual general meeting within nine months of the close of the first financial year, and AOC-4 and MGT-7A within thirty and sixty days of that meeting. Tax registrations, TDS, GST and employment compliance apply on their own triggers rather than on a fixed date.

We incorporated in November. Is our first financial year four months or sixteen?

Four and a bit. A company incorporated in November 2026 has a first financial year ending 31 March 2027. The fifteen-month first year only arises for a company incorporated in January, February or March, because section 2(41) pushes those to the 31 March of the following year.

We haven't started operations yet. Do we still have to file everything?

Yes, with two exceptions. Company law obligations attach to the company's existence, not to its trading, so board meetings, share certificates, INC-20A, registers, the AGM and the annual filings all apply to a dormant company. So does the income tax return, which is due even at nil income. What doesn't apply is anything with a transaction trigger: no employees means no EPF, ESI or POSH obligation, and no qualifying payments means no TDS.

Nobody told us about INC-20A until month seven. What now?

File it immediately. The declaration is still accepted after one hundred and eighty days, and the exposure is Rs 50,000 on the company plus Rs 1,000 for every day of default on each officer, capped at Rs 1,00,000 each. The real risk is section 10A(3), which lets the Registrar move to strike the company off where the declaration is missing and there is reasonable cause to believe no business is being carried on. Filing late is far better than not filing.

Our CA says ADT-1 isn't needed for the first auditor. Is that right?

On the rule text, yes. Rule 4(2) ties ADT-1 to an appointment under section 139(1), and a first auditor is appointed under section 139(6). The Institute of Company Secretaries of India agrees, and has asked the Ministry to clarify without receiving an answer. Most practitioners file anyway, because AOC-4 validates against an ADT-1 reference number and because a missing form invites questions. Filing it is the low-risk choice.

Is trademark registration a statutory compliance?

No. Nothing in the Trade Marks Act, 1999 or in company law requires a business to register its brand. It belongs on a first-year plan for commercial reasons rather than legal ones, and the trigger is sunk brand spend rather than revenue. An approved company name is not brand protection: the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and the Trade Marks Registry decide different questions on different databases.

Do I need a company secretary in year one?

Almost certainly not as an employee. A whole-time company secretary is mandatory only above a paid-up capital threshold that a first-year startup will not reach. What you need is a professional for the filings that require certification, and an internal owner for the process items that don't.

When is DIR-3 KYC due for a director who got their DIN this year?

There is no clear answer, and anyone who gives you one confidently is guessing. The rule changed on 31 March 2026 to a filing once every third financial year by 30 June, and it contains no provision for a newly allotted DIN. Professional commentary offers three different dates. Get your own advisor's view in writing and diarise the earliest of them, because a missed filing deactivates the DIN and costs Rs 5,000 to restore.

We have three employees. Do we need PF and ESI?

Not mandatorily. Provident fund is triggered at twenty employees and Employees' State Insurance at ten, or twenty in Maharashtra and Chandigarh. Both can be taken voluntarily below the threshold, and once you are covered you stay covered even if headcount falls. At three employees you would still register under the state shops and establishments Act, deduct professional tax where the state levies it, and deduct TDS on salaries above the threshold.

Does a one person company have to hold an AGM?

No. Section 96 exempts a one person company entirely, so its dates are fixed rather than derived from a meeting. AOC-4 is due within one hundred and eighty days of the close of the financial year.

What are the first-year filings for an LLP?

Form 3 for the LLP agreement within thirty days of incorporation, Form 11 as the annual return by 30 May, and Form 8 as the statement of account and solvency by 30 October. An audit is required only above Rs 40 lakh of turnover or Rs 25 lakh of contribution. There is no INC-20A, no share certificate, no statutory auditor within thirty days, and no AGM.

Is DPT-3 required in the first year?

Usually not, if the only money in is subscription capital that has been allotted, because allotted money is share capital rather than a reportable receipt. It is required the moment there is a director's loan, a convertible note, an inter-corporate loan or share application money still unallotted at 31 March. Application money not allotted within sixty days and not refunded within fifteen days after that becomes a deposit, which is a separate and worse problem.

Do we still need a DPIIT angel tax exemption before raising?

No. Angel tax stopped applying from assessment year 2025-26 and the exemption route is obsolete. The live exposure on a funding round is now section 68 on unexplained cash credits, where you need to establish the identity and creditworthiness of the investor and the genuineness of the transaction. DPIIT recognition remains worth having for other reasons, including halved penalties under section 446B.

What does the first year actually cost in compliance?

Statutory fees are small: government filing fees run to a few thousand rupees across the year, and DPIIT recognition and the certificate of eligibility carry no fee. The real cost is professional. A statutory audit, the certified filings and a retainer for ROC work are what a founder should budget for, and the range depends on the city and the firm. What blows the budget is remediation, because a missed filing compounds at Rs 100 a day per form with no ceiling.

Can I still use the CCFS scheme to clear old filings?

Until 15 September 2026. The Companies Compliance Facilitation Scheme, 2026 allows pending annual filings, including ADT-1, at ten percent of the accumulated additional fee. It was extended by circular on 31 August 2026 and has not been extended again. Charge forms are not covered, and companies already facing a final strike-off notice are excluded.

Does the Corporate Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026 change any of this?

Not yet. It was introduced in March 2026, referred to a Joint Parliamentary Committee which reported in August 2026, and it has not been passed by either House. Its proposals, including a further rise in the small company thresholds and video-conference AGMs, are not law and should not be planned around.

References

Companies Act, 2013: sections 2(41), 2(85), 10A, 12, 56, 88, 92, 96, 99, 118, 137, 139, 164(2), 172, 173, 184, 248, 403 and 446B.
Companies (Incorporation) Rules, 2014, rule 23A and rule 25; Companies (Audit and Auditors) Rules, 2014, rule 4(2); Companies (Management and Administration) Rules, 2014; Companies (Acceptance of Deposits) Rules, 2014, rule 16 and rule 21; Companies (Appointment and Qualification of Directors) Rules, 2014, rule 12A and rule 14.
Companies (Specification of Definitions Details) Amendment Rules, 2025, G.S.R. 880(E) dated 1 December 2025, raising the small company thresholds.
Companies (Appointment and Qualification of Directors) Amendment Rules, 2025, G.S.R. 943(E) dated 31 December 2025, effective 31 March 2026, substituting rule 12A.
MCA General Circular No. 01/2026 dated 24 February 2026 introducing the Companies Compliance Facilitation Scheme, 2026, as extended by General Circular No. 03/2026 dated 8 July 2026 and General Circular No. 04/2026 dated 31 August 2026.
Limited Liability Partnership Act, 2008, sections 2(1)(l), 34 and 35, with the LLP Rules, 2009, rules 21, 24 and 25.
Income-tax Act, 2025 (Act No. 30 of 2025), in force 1 April 2026, and the Income-tax Rules, 2026.
Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017, sections 22, 23 and 24.
Code on Social Security, 2020, Code on Wages, 2019, Industrial Relations Code, 2020 and Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020, brought into force 21 November 2025, with the central rules notified in May 2026.
Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, sections 4, 6, 21, 22 and 26.
Specified Companies (Furnishing of information about payment to micro and small enterprise suppliers) Order, 2019, S.O. 368(E) dated 22 January 2019, as amended by S.O. 2751(E) dated 15 July 2024, read with section 15 of the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Act, 2006.
Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade notification G.S.R. 108(E) dated 4 February 2026, revising the definition of a startup.
Indian Stamp Act, 1899, sections 17 and 40, and Article 19 of Schedule I, read with the stamp legislation of the relevant state.
Ministry of Corporate Affairs, mca.gov.in, for the V3 filing portal, the current form set and the circulars cited above.

Disclaimer

This article is for educational and general business information purposes only and does not constitute professional legal, financial, or tax advice. Filing obligations, due dates, thresholds and penalties change by notification and circular, sometimes mid-year, and the correct position for any specific company depends on its incorporation date, entity type, financial year, size and activity. Two points in this article are expressly unsettled at the date of writing and are flagged as such in the text: the first due date for director KYC where the DIN was allotted in the current financial year, and the stamp duty position on share certificates, which is the subject of pending litigation in Delhi. Consult a qualified company secretary, chartered accountant or advocate before acting on any date, form, threshold or figure set out here.