Every year, a few clients call us in the same week — once when an advance tax instalment is overdue, and once around the tax audit cut-off in September. Almost none of them missed the date because they didn't know it existed. They missed it because nobody had it written down anywhere they'd actually look.
Why these dates cost more than they look like they should
A missed compliance date in income tax rarely ends with the date itself. It compounds: interest accrues from the due date, not from when you notice; a late return restricts your ability to carry forward losses; a missed TDS deposit can get the entire expense disallowed in your own assessment. The cost of "I'll do it next week" is almost always higher than the five minutes it would have taken to do it on time.
That's the case for treating a tax calendar as infrastructure rather than a nice-to-have — something that sits in front of you whether or not this is the week you remembered to check.
The four deadline families that govern most businesses
- Advance tax instalments — due on 15 June (15% of the year's estimated liability), 15 September (45%), 15 December (75%), and 15 March (100%), for anyone whose estimated tax liability for the year exceeds ₹10,000.
- TDS deposits and returns — tax deducted in a month is due to be deposited by the 7th of the following month (30 April for March deductions), and quarterly TDS returns fall on 31 July, 31 October, 31 January, and 31 May.
- ITR filing — 31 July for individuals and entities not requiring an audit, 31 October for companies and others whose accounts must be audited, and 30 November where transfer pricing reporting applies.
- Tax audit report under Section 44AB — due by 30 September for most audit cases, ahead of the extended 31 October return filing deadline that depends on it.
A working month-by-month view
| Month | What typically falls due |
|---|---|
| April | TDS deposit & return for Q4 of the previous year (returns by 31 May) |
| June | 1st advance tax instalment (15%) — 15 June |
| July | Q1 TDS return (31 July); ITR filing for non-audit cases (31 July) |
| September | 2nd advance tax instalment (45%) — 15 Sept; tax audit report due — 30 Sept |
| October | Q2 TDS return (31 Oct); ITR filing for audit cases (31 Oct) |
| November | ITR filing where transfer pricing reporting applies — 30 Nov |
| December | 3rd advance tax instalment (75%) — 15 Dec |
| January | Q3 TDS return — 31 Jan |
| March | Final advance tax instalment (100%) — 15 March; last date to deposit TDS for the year |
This is a working skeleton, not a substitute for a date that's specific to your entity, your turnover, and the assessment-year notifications issued for that year — which is exactly why we build a personalised version of this for every client rather than handing out a generic PDF.
The dates that quietly cost the most
- Advance tax shortfalls attract interest under Sections 234B and 234C — small percentages that add up fast when the underlying liability is large.
- Late filing of the return attracts a fee under Section 234F, and — more consequentially for growing businesses — forfeits your right to carry forward business losses to future years.
- Late TDS deposits don't just attract interest; the corresponding expense can be disallowed in your own computation under Section 40(a)(ia) until the tax is actually deposited, inflating your taxable income in the year it happened.
"Most of the tax notices we help clients respond to trace back to a date that slipped, not a position that was wrong. A calendar that's actually built around your entity and your numbers — not a generic list — is the cheapest insurance a business can buy." — Aakash Kumbhat, Partner
How we keep our clients ahead of these dates
Every client engagement on the direct tax side comes with a calendar built around their specific entity type, turnover, and applicable provisions — not a generic list. A partner reviews the computation before each instalment and each filing, so the number that goes to the department has been seen by someone who has read the Act, not just run software against it. That's the difference between a calendar that creates anxiety and one that quietly removes it.
The bottom line
You don't need to memorise the Income Tax Act to stay ahead of these dates. You need a system that surfaces the right one, with enough lead time to act on it — and a partner who looks at the number before it goes anywhere. That's what a real tax engagement should feel like: less scrambling, more certainty about what's coming and when.