The company ITR filing due date for AY 2026-27 is 31 October 2026. Every year a founder or director reads the headlines about the “last date to file your income tax return” — 31 July, then 31 August for AY 2026-27 — assumes it applied to them, and either scrambles at the end of August or panics that they have missed it. For a company, and for anyone whose accounts have to be audited, neither reaction is right. Your due date under the law was never 31 August; it is 31 October 2026, a full six weeks later. The catch is that those six weeks are not free time.
What the company ITR filing due date for AY 2026-27 actually means
The Income-tax Act gives different classes of taxpayer different “due dates” for the same return. A salaried individual with no audit requirement filed by 31 August 2026 for AY 2026-27 (the year that assesses income earned in FY 2025-26). A company, a person whose accounts are required to be audited, and a working partner of a firm whose accounts are audited all get the later date: 31 October 2026. The income-tax portal itself frames AY 2026-27 this way — “cases where the ITR due date is 31st October, 2026,” sitting alongside 30 November 2026 for transfer-pricing cases that also file a Form 3CEB. Because AY 2026-27 assesses income earned before 1 April 2026, this return is governed by the settled Income-tax Act, 1961 — the dates and categories are the established ones, not the renumbered provisions taking effect for later years.
It helps to hold three dates apart, because they are routinely confused. The tax audit report is due 30 September 2026. The income-tax return for companies and audit cases is due 31 October 2026. And where a business has cross-border related-party dealings and files a Form 3CEB, its return runs to 30 November 2026. Same assessment year, three different hard dates — and the one that trips people up is the first, because it arrives a month before the return everyone is watching.
The six weeks come with a gate: 30 September
The reason 31 October is not simply “more time” is the tax audit report. If your business turnover or professional receipts cross the audit thresholds, your accounts have to be audited and the report furnished under the specified-date rule — one month before the return due date, which for a 31 October return is 30 September 2026. That report (Form 3CA/3CB with 3CD) is furnished by your chartered accountant and accepted by you on the portal, and the return cannot be sensibly finalised until it exists. As of mid-September 2026 the CBDT has not extended the 30 September date — professional bodies have asked, but nothing has been notified. So a company that treats 31 October as its working deadline has, in practice, already missed the one that governs it. 31 October 2026 itself falls on a Saturday; plan to the date rather than count on it slipping.
There is usually a round of “will the dates be extended” chatter in September, and it is worth being disciplined about it. In some earlier years the CBDT did push these deadlines, but an extension is a notification, not an expectation — and none has been issued for AY 2026-27 as of mid-September. Building a filing plan around a relief that may never come is how a routine October turns into a scramble; if an extension is notified later, it is easy to relax a plan, and impossible to un-miss a date. Check the position on the day you file, and work to the statutory dates until something official replaces them.
“But we don’t have a tax audit” — you may still be on 31 October
Two groups reach 31 October without a turnover-based audit. The first is companies as such: a private limited company files its income-tax return by the company due date whatever its size — the 31 July and 31 August dates are for non-company taxpayers who are not under audit. The second is working partners of a firm whose accounts are audited: the partner’s own return shifts to the firm’s later date. So the useful question is not “how big are we” but “are we a company, are our accounts audited, or are we a partner in an audited firm” — any one of those puts the return on 31 October.
What cannot be fixed after 31 October
The date matters because some things are lost by crossing it. File after the due date and the return becomes a belated return, allowed up to 31 December 2026 for AY 2026-27 — but a belated return cannot carry forward business losses or capital losses to set against future profit. For a company sitting on a loss it expects to use in a profitable year ahead, missing 31 October can quietly turn a recoverable loss into a wasted one. Late filing also runs an interest cost, attracts a late-filing fee, and delays any refund. None of this is dramatic on the day; it surfaces a year later, in a set-off that is no longer available.
So the calm version of 31 October is built in September. Confirm which due date actually applies to each entity — company, audit case, partner, transfer-pricing case — get the tax audit report furnished and accepted by 30 September where it is required, and reconcile the numbers (your AIS, Form 26AS and books) before the return is filed rather than after. The businesses that find October a scramble are usually the ones that spent September assuming they had until the 31st.