Income Tax Due Dates AY 2026-27 (FY 2025-26): Full List

If you are planning the AY 2026-27 (FY 2025-26) workload for your practice, the anchor dates are simple to remember: non-audit ITRs (ITR-1/ITR-2) by 31 July 2026, the tax audit report under section 44AB by 30 September 2026, audit-case ITRs by 31 October 2026, and the belated or revised return deadline of 31 December 2026. Around these sit the four advance-tax instalments and the four quarterly TDS returns. This page lists every income tax due date for the year by case and form, with the exact thresholds and penalties.

One standing caveat before the tables: always confirm a date near the deadline — government extensions are common. CBDT issues extension circulars almost every year, often in the final week when the e-filing portal is under load. Use these dates to plan capacity, not as a substitute for checking the official notification close to each deadline. For the full cross-law view that also covers GST and ROC, see our CA compliance calendar for India.

ITR filing due dates

The ITR due date depends on whether the return is an audit case and which form applies. The table below is the base position for AY 2026-27.

Filing	Form	Applies to	Due date
ITR (non-audit)	ITR-1 / ITR-2	Salaried and simple cases	31 July 2026
ITR (non-audit)	ITR-3 / ITR-4	Business or professional, non-audit	~31 August 2026 (subject to extension; base date 31 July 2026)
ITR (audit cases)	—	Where accounts are audited under 44AB	31 October 2026
Transfer pricing	Form 3CEB filing-linked ITR	International / specified domestic transactions	30 November 2026
Belated / revised return	—	Anyone late-filing or correcting	31 December 2026

Two points worth flagging. The ITR-3/ITR-4 non-audit date of roughly 31 August 2026 reflects the recent pattern of short extensions — the statutory base date is 31 July 2026, so treat 31 August as something to verify rather than bank on. And the belated or revised window closes on 31 December 2026: this is effectively a hard wall, because once it passes you generally cannot revise the return for that year.

A late ITR is filed under section 139(4) and carries a late fee under section 234F, plus interest under section 234A on any unpaid tax. Filing on time also protects the right to carry forward business and capital losses, which is lost if the original return misses the due date — a detail clients often underestimate.

Tax audit due date and 44AB thresholds

The tax audit report under section 44AB (Form 3CA or 3CB along with 3CD) is the fixed point that gates the audit-case ITR. For AY 2026-27 it is due by 30 September 2026, and by 31 October 2026 in transfer pricing cases.

Whether a client needs an audit at all turns on these thresholds:

Assessee	Threshold	Audit required
Business (general)	Turnover above ₹1 crore	Yes
Business (low cash)	Turnover above ₹10 crore, where cash receipts and cash payments are each ≤ 5%	Yes above ₹10 crore
Profession	Gross receipts above ₹50 lakh	Yes

The ₹10 crore relaxation is the one most firms get wrong. It applies only when both cash receipts and cash payments are 5% or less of the respective totals — so a client running mostly through banking channels can stay out of audit up to ₹10 crore, but a single significant cash leg pulls the threshold back to ₹1 crore. Document the 5% test in your working papers, because it is exactly what gets queried later.

Use 3CA where the accounts are already audited under another law (such as the Companies Act) and 3CB where they are not; 3CD is the detailed particulars statement attached in both cases.

Advance tax due dates

Advance tax applies where the total tax liability for the year is ₹10,000 or more after TDS. It is paid in four instalments, each expressed as a cumulative percentage of the year’s estimated liability — so the September instalment must bring the total paid to 45%, not add a further 45%.

Instalment	Due date	Cumulative tax payable
First	15 June 2025	15%
Second	15 September 2025	45%
Third	15 December 2025	75%
Fourth	15 March 2026	100%

Underpaying or deferring an instalment attracts interest under sections 234B and 234C, so the real work is forecasting each client’s income before the 15th of these four months. Presumptive-tax clients under 44AD or 44ADA are the useful exception: they can pay their entire advance tax in a single instalment by 15 March 2026 rather than spreading it across the year.

TDS return due dates

TDS has two rhythms — a monthly payment of tax deducted and a quarterly return. Missing the payment date triggers interest; missing the return date triggers a late fee per day, so both matter.

Item	Form	Period	Due date
TDS payment	Challan	Most months	7th of next month
TDS payment (March)	Challan	March deductions	30 April
TDS return — Q1	24Q / 26Q / 27Q	Apr–Jun	31 July
TDS return — Q2	24Q / 26Q / 27Q	Jul–Sep	31 October
TDS return — Q3	24Q / 26Q / 27Q	Oct–Dec	31 January
TDS return — Q4	24Q / 26Q / 27Q	Jan–Mar	31 May
Form 16 (salary TDS certificate)	Form 16	Annual	15 June
Form 16A (non-salary certificate)	Form 16A	Quarterly	Within 15 days of the TDS-return due date

A reminder on the forms: 24Q is for salary TDS, 26Q for resident non-salary payments, and 27Q for payments to non-residents. Form 16 is due by 15 June, the date salaried clients chase you about every year, so schedule it early; Form 16A must go out within 15 days of each quarterly return due date. Always confirm a date near the deadline, since extensions are common.

Penalties for missing dates

Missed income-tax dates rarely cost just one fee — they stack interest, late fees and lost reliefs. The main ones to keep in front of clients:

• Tax audit not done or report not filed (section 271B): penalty of the lower of 0.5% of turnover or ₹1.5 lakh. For a client near ₹3 crore turnover the 0.5% figure already exceeds ₹1.5 lakh, so the ₹1.5 lakh cap is what usually applies.
• Late ITR (section 234F): a late filing fee on returns filed after the due date, alongside interest under section 234A on unpaid tax.
• Short-paid advance tax (sections 234B and 234C): monthly interest on the shortfall, which is why each of the four instalment dates matters in its own right.
• Late TDS payment and returns: interest on delayed deposit plus a per-day late fee on the quarterly return, both of which build up quietly until the return is actually filed.
• Lost loss carry-forward: filing the original ITR after the due date forfeits the carry-forward of business and capital losses for that year — often the costliest miss even though it is not a “penalty” in name.

The pattern is clear: the cheapest way to handle these is to never trigger them, because almost every consequence compounds with time.

Tips to stay on time (software)

A wall calendar stops scaling past a handful of clients, because the same date means different work for each one — one client needs a 3CB, another a 26Q, another an advance-tax estimate. The fix is a system that maps every deadline to the specific clients it applies to and chases the work for you.

Most modern CA practice management tools do exactly this. A good one will:

• Track ITR, tax-audit, advance-tax and TDS deadlines per client, not as generic dates.
• Forecast advance-tax instalments and flag who is short before each 15th.
• Send staff reminders and client follow-ups ahead of every due date.
• Show one firm-wide dashboard of what is pending, in progress and filed.

A few Indian options are built around this workflow. QwikCA is our top pick — built specifically for Indian CA practice, with client and staff mobile apps and ITR/TDS/GST compliance tracking, and now used by 2,000+ firms and 5,000+ active users. As a newer platform it has fewer third-party listings than decade-old suites, so the surest test is its one-month free trial against your own client mix. Saral TaxOffice is a longer-established desktop-rooted suite that many firms use specifically for income-tax and TDS return preparation. If you are weighing a modern tracker against a simpler tool, our QwikCA vs TaxAdda comparison is a useful starting point, and you can see how the wider field stacks up in our rankings.

For more on the filing rules behind these dates, browse our income tax coverage, or start from the homepage to match a tool to your firm’s size. Whatever you choose, the principle is the same: turn this list into a per-client task board and let the software do the remembering — while you keep verifying the exact dates near each deadline, since government extensions remain common.