New Delhi: The government has extended the deadlines for companies to file their financial statements and annual returns for the financial year 2025-26 by December 31 without paying additional fees. 

The Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) said in a circular that companies can file financial statements through various versions of Form AOC-4, including consolidated financial statements, filings for financial statements in XBRL (machine-readable digital reporting) format and applicable non-banking financial company (NBFC) forms, by December 31, 2026, without additional fees.

According to the circular, the deadline for filing annual returns through Forms MGT-7 and MGT-7A has been extended to January 31, 2027.

The ministry took the decision after stakeholder representations seeking more time to complete statutory filings.

The MCA granted two extensions for annual filings for FY 2024-25 last year, through circulars dated October 17, 2025, and December 30, 2025.

AOC-4 forms are used to file companies' financial statements with the Registrar of Companies (RoC).

MGT-7 is used to file a company's annual return, while MGT-7A is the annual return form for one-person companies and small companies.

The extension comes amid concerns raised by company secretaries and other professionals over technical difficulties on the MCA-21 Version 3 portal.

The MCA-21 Version 3 (V3) portal is the Ministry of Corporate Affairs’ online platform through which companies submit statutory filings and access corporate registry and compliance services.

The Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI) had sought an extension until December 31, 2026, without additional fees. The institute flagged frequent portal downtime and slow response times concerning the MCA portal.

These included session timeouts and automatic logouts during form preparation and filing, difficulties in logging in, profile updates and user access management, errors in pre-filled data and inconsistencies in data retrieval.