MCA's AOC-4 Extension Does Not Cover LLP Form 8, MSME-1 or ADT-1 — Read This Before You Relax

When the MCA announced that AOC-4 could be filed fee-free till 31 December and MGT-7 till 31 January, a lot of directors heard one word: extension. An LLP asked whether Form 8 could wait till December. A company asked whether its 31 October MSME-1 date had moved. Neither date moved. The circular that gave companies room — General Circular No. 05/2026, dated 24 October 2026 — names a handful of company forms and nothing else. If your filing is not on that list, your clock never stopped.

Short answer: MCA General Circular No. 05/2026 waives only the additional fee on specified AOC-4 forms filed by 31 December 2026 and MGT-7/MGT-7A by 31 January 2027. It does not cover LLP Form 8 (due 30 October 2026), MSME-1 (due 31 October 2026), ADT-1 (due 15 October 2026) or DIR-3 KYC, and the AGM deadline never moved.

What the circular actually covers

Read the circular rather than the headlines and it is a short, precise list. For FY 2025-26, these forms may be filed without additional fees up to the dates shown. Everything else in this post is about what is missing from this table.

Two lines in the circular matter as much as the dates. Paragraph 3 says the circular is not an extension of the statutory time for holding an AGM — a company that missed its AGM date is still in default on that count. Paragraph 4 says filings made after the window attract all fees, including additional fees, counted from the date the filing was actually due. That count-back is the trap I come back to below. And the waiver covers the additional fee only. The normal filing fee was never waived.

Think of it as a small umbrella in heavy rain. It keeps two people dry. Everyone standing outside it gets just as wet as before, and the rain does not pause because two people found shelter. Your job this week is to check whether you are under it or outside it — form by form, not company by company, because one company can easily be both.

LLP Form 8: due today, and the circular does not touch it

LLPs live under a different Act, and that is the whole reason they are outside this circular. Circular 05/2026 is a Companies Act, 2013 measure naming company forms. LLP filings run under the Limited Liability Partnership Act, 2008, and no circular has moved them. Form 8 — the Statement of Account and Solvency — stays due on 30 October 2026 for FY 2025-26. That is today. If you are reading this on the day it was published, Form 8 is the first thing on your list, not the last.

Form 8 carries the LLP's statement of assets and liabilities as at 31 March, its income and expenditure statement, and a solvency declaration by the designated partners. Where turnover crosses ₹40 lakh or partner contribution crosses ₹25 lakh, the accounts need an audit first and the auditor's report travels with the form. Form 11, the annual return, was due on 30 May 2026 and is a separate default if it is still open — filing Form 8 does not cure a missed Form 11.

The cost of missing Form 8 is where old guides mislead people, so let me correct a stale claim plainly. Several older pages still say late LLP filings cost ₹100 a day flat. That is no longer how the MCA portal charges. The additional fee is now a multiple of the normal fee, rising with the delay, and the multiple depends on whether the LLP is a small LLP — contribution of ₹25 lakh or less and turnover of ₹40 lakh or less, both conditions together.

Work it through with real numbers. A small LLP with contribution of ₹1 lakh pays a normal fee of ₹50 per form. File Form 8 forty-five days late and the 31–60 day slab applies: 4 × ₹50 = ₹200 additional, ₹250 in total government fee for that form. The same delay for a larger LLP costs 8 × ₹50 = ₹400 additional, ₹450 in total. Those are portal fees, and they are the smaller half of the exposure. Sections 34(5) and 35(2) of the LLP Act separately expose the LLP to a penalty of ₹100 a day, capped at ₹1 lakh for the LLP and ₹50,000 for each designated partner, through adjudication. The slab fee is what the portal charges when you file. The penalty is what an adjudication order can add. Do not confuse the two, and do not budget for only one.

If you need the full Form 8 walkthrough — what goes in it, who signs, how the audit trigger works — I covered it in the LLP Form 8 filing guide. The point of this post is narrower: no circular bought you time on it, and today is the day.

MSME-1: due tomorrow, and silence is not a filing

MSME-1 is the half-yearly return a company files when it has payments outstanding to micro and small enterprise suppliers beyond 45 days. For the April–September 2026 half-year, it falls due on 31 October 2026 — tomorrow. Circular 05/2026 says nothing about it, and nothing else this month has moved it either.

Two misunderstandings cost companies here. The first is thinking MSME-1 is a nil return. It is not. If every MSE supplier was paid within 45 days through the half-year and nothing was outstanding beyond 45 days on 30 September, no MSME-1 is required for that period at all. But if any payment crossed 45 days at any point in the half-year — even if it was paid before 30 September — the return is triggered. The July 2024 form revision made that explicit: delayed-during-the-period counts, not only still-outstanding-at-period-end.

The second misunderstanding is treating the penalty as small because the filing itself carries no government fee. Section 405(4) of the Companies Act, 2013 sets a penalty of ₹20,000 for the company and ₹20,000 for every officer in default, plus ₹1,000 a day for a continuing default, capped at ₹3 lakh for each person. Take a company with two directors in default, thirty days late: each person faces ₹20,000 plus 30 × ₹1,000 = ₹50,000, and the combined exposure is ₹1,50,000 — before any interest question under the MSMED Act, which charges compound interest at three times the RBI bank rate on delayed MSE payments and runs independently of the filing. The return is also the document that can expose that interest liability, which is one more reason to reconcile the vendor list before filing rather than after.

The full trigger test and the July 2024 changes are in the MSME-1 due-date guide. For this week, the action is simple: if you owe the return, file it by tomorrow, and keep the vendor reconciliation behind it.

ADT-1: already late, and already running at ₹100 a day

ADT-1 is the form that appoints the auditor, and it is the quietest casualty of extension headlines. Under Section 139(1), a company must file ADT-1 within 15 days of the AGM. For a company whose AGM was held on 30 September 2026, ADT-1 fell due on 15 October 2026. That date passed two weeks ago, and Circular 05/2026 does not mention ADT-1 at all.

Company forms outside the circular still carry the old additional-fee rule: ₹100 per day, per form, with no ceiling. Fifteen days late on 30 October means 15 × ₹100 = ₹1,500 of additional fee on ADT-1 alone, and every further day adds ₹100.

DIR-3 KYC: the one that locks directors out

DIR-3 KYC, the director KYC, was due on 30 September 2026. It is not in the circular either. Its cost is not a daily fee but a lockout: a DIN whose KYC is not done gets deactivated, and reactivating it costs ₹5,000 per director — and until it is reactivated, that director's signature cannot drive any MCA filing, including the filings this post is about.

The post-window trap: fees counted from the original date

Now the trap, because it is the part of the circular that will hurt in January. Paragraph 4 says that once the window closes, additional fees are counted from the date the filing was actually due — not from the end of the window. A company whose AGM was on 30 September 2026 had an ordinary AOC-4 date of 30 October 2026. File on 10 February 2027, after the 31 December window, and the additional fee runs from 31 October: 1 day left in October, 30 in November, 31 in December, 31 in January, 10 in February. That is 103 days. At ₹100 a day, the additional fee alone is ₹10,300 for that one form, on top of the normal fee.

The circular is a fee waiver, not a new deadline: the statutory dates never moved, only the price of missing them, and only inside the window.

Your filing order for this week

If more than one of these applies to you, work in this order.

1. LLP Form 8 — today, 30 October. File it before anything else if you are an LLP. Check the audit trigger first: turnover above ₹40 lakh or contribution above ₹25 lakh means the audit must be signed off before filing.
2. MSME-1 — tomorrow, 31 October. Only if the trigger is met, but check the trigger properly: any MSE payment beyond 45 days at any point in the half-year counts, even if since paid.
3. ADT-1 — immediately. Already 15 days late for a 30 September AGM, running at ₹100 a day. File it this week and stop that clock.
4. DIR-3 KYC — before your next filing. If any director's DIN is deactivated, reactivate at ₹5,000 and unblock every other filing.
5. AOC-4 and MGT-7 — inside their windows, deliberately. Use the time the circular gives you, but diary the real boundaries: 31 December 2026 for AOC-4, 31 January 2027 for MGT-7. Do not let the window turn into drift, because drift past the window pays the full count-back.

Five mistakes to avoid this week

First, telling an LLP client the extension covers them. It does not, and the correction on the day after the deadline is worth nothing. Second, filing MSME-1 as a nil return out of caution — a nil MSME-1 is not a thing, and a wrong filing creates its own record. Third, assuming the old ₹100-a-day flat rule still prices LLP delays; the slab multiples are what the portal charges now. Fourth, treating 31 December as AOC-4's new statutory date; it is the last fee-free date, and the count-back runs from 30 October. Fifth, letting a deactivated DIN block a filing while you troubleshoot the portal instead of the KYC.

Frequently asked questions

Does the MCA extension cover LLP Form 8?

No. General Circular No. 05/2026 names company forms under the Companies Act, 2013 only. LLP filings run under the LLP Act, 2008, and Form 8 remains due on 30 October 2026. As of 30 October 2026, no circular has extended it.

Is MSME-1 covered by the extension?

No. MSME-1 is not named in Circular 05/2026. For the April–September 2026 half-year it remains due on 31 October 2026, where the trigger — MSE payments outstanding beyond 45 days — is met.

What does a late LLP Form 8 actually cost?

The portal charges an additional fee as a multiple of the normal fee, by delay slab and LLP size — from 1× for up to 15 days to 15× for a small LLP or 30× for another LLP for delays of 181–360 days. Separately, Sections 34(5) and 35(2) of the LLP Act expose the LLP to a penalty of ₹100 a day, capped at ₹1 lakh for the LLP and ₹50,000 for each designated partner.

What happens if I file AOC-4 after 31 December 2026?

Additional fees are counted from the original due date, not from 31 December. For a 30 September 2026 AGM, the original date is 30 October 2026, so a 10 February 2027 filing carries 103 days of additional fee at ₹100 a day — ₹10,300 for that form, plus the normal fee.

Should I still file AOC-4 early if the fee is waived till December?

Use the window, but diary it as a window, not a deadline. The fee relief is real and worth using when the accounts or the audit need the time. What I would not do is let December arrive with the filing still unstarted — a validation failure or a deactivated DIN on 31 December turns a fee-free filing into a count-back filing overnight.

The extension was good news for two forms. It was never a filing holiday, and the filings it left out fall due this week. Check your own list form by form, file the uncovered ones first, and keep the covered ones inside their windows. For the circular itself, read the MCA annual filing extension post, and for the season as a whole, the compliance calendar tracks every date in one place. If you need help with the filings themselves, the annual filing service and the LLP service cover both sides of this post's divide.