India's filing calendar used to be simple: if your accounts were not liable to audit, you filed by 31 July. The Finance Act, 2026 amended Section 139(1) to give non-audit filers of ITR-3 and ITR-4 a due date of 31 August instead. Salaried filers on ITR-1 and ITR-2 kept 31 July.
The short version: If you file ITR-1 or ITR-2, your deadline is 31 July 2026 and it is two days away. If you file ITR-3 or ITR-4 and your accounts are not liable to audit under Section 44AB, you have until 31 August 2026. This is a statutory change, not a departmental circular — so do not wait for the extension announcement that usually arrives in late July. It already happened, and it did not include you if you are salaried.
The deadline is not set by your ITR form
This is the part that catches people, and it caught tax professionals in the first season under the new rule. The determining factor is not which return form you file and it is not the nature of your income. It is whether your accounts are liable to audit under Section 44AB.
Two people filing the identical ITR-3 can now have different due dates. A consultant with ₹40 lakh of professional receipts is not liable to audit and files by 31 August. A consultant who crosses the audit threshold, or who opts out of the presumptive scheme after having opted in, is liable to audit and files by 31 October. Same form, ten weeks apart.
The practical instruction is to establish your audit position first, and read the deadline off that — not off the form number in your filing utility.
The full calendar for AY 2026-27
| Who | Due date |
|---|---|
| ITR-1 and ITR-2 — salaried individuals and HUFs, no audit | 31 July 2026 |
| ITR-3 and ITR-4 — business or professional income, no audit | 31 August 2026 |
| Accounts liable to audit under Section 44AB | 31 October 2026 |
| Transfer pricing cases (Form 3CEB) | 30 November 2026 |
| Belated return | 31 December 2026 |
| Revised return | 31 March 2027 |
| Updated return (ITR-U) | 31 March 2031 |
The revised-return window quietly got three months longer
Less discussed than the August change, and more useful. The window to file a revised return under Section 139(5) now runs to the end of the assessment year — 31 March 2027 — against the earlier 31 December cut-off.
That matters because of when information actually arrives. Capital gains statements get restated, an AIS entry turns out to be wrong, a client issues a corrected TDS certificate in February. Under the old rule those discoveries after December meant an updated return with additional tax; now they can be handled as an ordinary revision.
What filing late actually costs
Two charges, and they are separate.
Section 234F is a flat late fee: ₹1,000 if your total income is up to ₹5 lakh, ₹5,000 above that. It applies from the day after your due date, regardless of whether you owe any tax.
Section 234A is interest at 1% per month or part month on unpaid tax. "Part month" is doing real work in that sentence — filing on 1 August when your deadline was 31 July triggers a full month's interest, not one day's. If you owe ₹80,000 and file five weeks late, that is two months of interest at 1%, so ₹1,600, plus the ₹5,000 fee.
The cost that is not a penalty: file after your due date and you lose the right to carry forward losses — business losses, capital losses, speculation losses. Only house property loss survives a belated return. For anyone who had a bad year in equities, this is far more expensive than the ₹5,000 fee, and it is irreversible. A capital loss you cannot carry forward is a deduction against future gains you will never get back.
The regime default still trips people up
The new regime is the default. If you file without actively selecting the old regime, you are taxed under the new one — no HRA exemption, no 80C, no 80D, but a ₹75,000 standard deduction and lower slab rates.
For salaried filers the choice can be made afresh each year at filing. For business and professional income it cannot: opting out of the new regime is done via Form 10-IEA, and switching back is once in a lifetime. That asymmetry is worth pausing on before you tick a box in a hurry on 31 July.
Run both before deciding — our regime comparison calculator computes surcharge and marginal relief, which is where hand calculations usually go wrong at higher incomes.
What to do in the next two days
- Confirm which bucket you are in. Not liable to audit and filing ITR-1 or ITR-2 means Friday. Not liable to audit but filing ITR-3 or ITR-4 means you have another month.
- Reconcile AIS and Form 26AS before you file, not after. Mismatches are the most common trigger for a notice, and they are trivial to fix beforehand and tedious to fix afterwards.
- If you are going to be late anyway, still file by 31 December to stay within the belated window — but understand you have already lost loss carry-forward by then.
- E-verify within 30 days. An unverified return is treated as never filed, which is a way to incur every late-filing consequence while believing you have complied.