Every foreign company that sets up in India gets a compliance calendar eventually. Usually it arrives after the first missed deadline, assembled in a hurry by whoever is cleaning up. It should exist on day one, before the first invoice is raised.

Here is the calendar I hand to foreign parents, and what sits behind each line.

Monthly

GST returns. Once registered, outward supplies are reported monthly and the summary return follows. The trap for new entities is assuming that no revenue means nothing to file. A nil return is still a return, and the late fee runs per day until it is filed.

TDS deposits. Tax deducted at source on salaries, professional fees, rent and contractor payments is deposited by the seventh of the following month. Interest for late deposit is charged by the month or part of a month, so being a day late costs a full month.

Payroll statutory dues. Provident fund and ESI where applicable, with their own monthly deadlines and their own portals. These are the ones foreign parents forget entirely, because in most home jurisdictions they are folded into a single payroll filing.

Quarterly

TDS returns. Depositing the tax is not the same as reporting it. The quarterly statement is what lets your vendors and employees see the credit in their own tax account. Get this wrong and you will hear about it from every person you paid.

Board meetings. An Indian company is required to hold board meetings at prescribed intervals, with proper notice, quorum and minutes. Foreign parents tend to treat the India board as an administrative fiction. It is not — the minute book is one of the first things an auditor, a buyer or a tax officer asks to see.

Advance tax. If the company expects a tax liability, it pays in instalments through the year. A company that waits until the return is filed pays interest on top of the tax.

Annually

Statutory audit. Every Indian company is audited, regardless of size or turnover. There is no small-company exemption of the kind that exists in the UK or Singapore. This is the single biggest surprise for foreign parents, and it needs to be budgeted from year one.

Income tax return, with a tax audit report where the turnover thresholds are crossed.

Transfer pricing documentation and the accountant’s report where there are international transactions with related parties. For a subsidiary of a foreign parent, this is almost always from the first year, because the intercompany service arrangement or the funding itself is a related-party transaction.

ROC annual filings — the financial statements and the annual return, each with its own form and its own due date.

Director KYC for every person holding a DIN, including directors who sit overseas and have never set foot in the company’s office.

Event-driven, and easiest to miss

These have no fixed date, which is exactly why they get missed:

  • Reporting to the RBI when the parent remits share capital, and again when shares are allotted — both inside tight windows
  • Filings on any change of directors, registered office or authorised capital
  • Registration of charges when the company borrows against assets
  • Form 15CA and 15CB before most remittances leave India
  • Annual return on foreign liabilities and assets, where the company has received foreign investment

The foreign exchange filings are the ones I watch most closely. They carry short deadlines, they are triggered by a money movement rather than a date, and the regularisation process when they are missed is slow and public.

How to actually run it

Three things make the difference between a calendar that works and one that decorates a shared drive.

First, one named owner in the group, not “the India team”. A deadline owned by a function is owned by nobody.

Second, deadlines tracked in the parent’s own system, not only in the Indian accountant’s. If the only person who knows a filing is due is the person who may be on leave, that is a single point of failure.

Third, a standing monthly review of what was filed and what is next, with acknowledgements attached. Filing receipts are the evidence; a WhatsApp message saying “done” is not.

The cost of getting this wrong

Indian penalties for late filing are rarely ruinous on their own. What is expensive is the compounding effect: an unfiled return blocks the next one, a missed exchange-control filing surfaces during diligence, a director disqualification stalls every other form. The damage usually shows up when the company most wants to move quickly — a funding round, a buyer, a new licence.

If you want this set up properly before it becomes a cleanup exercise, AeTx runs the full compliance calendar for foreign-owned Indian entities, including the exchange-control filings most accountants leave to someone else.