Overview
- The Ministry of Corporate Affairs issued a circular dated October 24 that allows companies to file financial statements in AOC-4 and its variants without extra fees until December 31, 2026.
- Annual returns filed through MGT-7 and MGT-7A may be submitted without additional fees until January 31, 2027.
- The fee waiver covers consolidated statements, XBRL (machine-readable) filings and NBFC-specific AOC-4 forms, and applies only to filings made by the extended dates.
- The circular makes clear it does not extend the statutory time to hold Annual General Meetings and warns that any additional fees for late filings will be calculated from the original due dates.
- Stakeholders including the Institute of Company Secretaries of India pressed for the change after reporting repeated portal problems such as downtime, slow responses, session timeouts, automatic logouts, login failures and errors retrieving pre-filled data, and the move follows similar extensions granted for FY24-25.