Every company, LLP and partnership firm registered in Pune files an income tax return each year, profit or loss. So does every proprietor and professional whose income crosses the basic exemption limit. The one common exception is a salaried reader below that limit with no refund to claim and no loss to carry forward. Everyone else has a due date, a set of figures that must agree with what the department already holds, and a fee under section 234F if the date slips. Which of those two groups you sit in decides the rest of this page.
Does income tax return filing actually apply to your Pune business?
Registration settles it for entities. A private limited company or an LLP with a registered office in Pune files even in a year with no revenue at all, and a partnership firm does the same. For an individual the test is income rather than activity. A Kothrud consultant who billed nothing still files if bank interest and capital gains push total income past the exemption limit.
Two further triggers catch readers who assume they are out of it. You file to claim back tax that was deducted at source, and you file to carry a business or capital loss forward. A Chakan unit that ran a loss this year and skips the return keeps that loss on paper only. It cannot set the loss against next year's profit.
Whether a tax audit applies is a separate question. It changes your date, not your duty. Audit cases file by 31 October and everybody else files by 31 July.
What goes wrong when your return does not match your other filings?
The department holds most of your numbers before you type anything. Form 26AS carries the tax deducted against your PAN. The Annual Information Statement carries what banks, brokers, registrars and buyers reported about you. A return that disagrees with either one is a defect notice waiting to be issued.
For a Pune business the second mismatch is the bigger one. Turnover in the return has to sit comfortably beside the turnover already declared in your GST returns under a GSTIN beginning 27. Where the two differ, the explanation belongs in your books before anyone asks for it.
The money side is mechanical and nobody at a counter can waive it. Section 234F charges a fee for filing late. Section 234A charges interest on tax that is still unpaid. Sections 234B and 234C charge interest where advance tax fell short during the year itself.
Which dates and figures govern your return?
Four of the rows below are income tax dates and one is a Maharashtra date. A Pune business meets all five inside the same twelve months, which is why we build one calendar rather than two.
| Filing or payment | Due date | What follows if it slips |
|---|---|---|
| Fourth advance tax instalment | 15 March 2026 | interest under section 234C on the shortfall |
| PTEC payment for the entity | 31 March 2026 | the enrolment amount falls into arrears |
| Return where no tax audit applies | 31 July 2026 | fee under section 234F and interest under section 234A |
| Return in a tax audit case | 31 October 2026 | the same fee, and the audit report is late with it |
| Belated or revised return | 31 December 2026 | the return is taken, but a business loss can no longer be carried forward |
How does the Maharashtra layer sit inside a Pune return?
Income tax is a central levy and nothing in it changes at the state border. What changes is the set of state figures that feed the computation. Maharashtra levies profession tax under its own Act of 1975, and section 5 creates two separate certificates, PTEC for a person liable in their own right and PTRC for an employer who deducts tax from salaries.
PTEC sits at ₹2,500 a year for a Maharashtra company, an LLP, a GST registered person and each partner of a firm, with the annual date at 31 March. Some other classes sit at lower Schedule I rates. PTRC is the other instrument. It authorises an employer to deduct ₹200 a month from a qualifying salary, and ₹300 in the month of February. A woman paid ₹25,000 a month or less falls outside that deduction altogether, and the relief attaches to PTRC alone, never to PTEC.
Both certificates live on mahagst.gov.in, and the challans sitting there are where the profession tax figure in your computation should come from. On the GST side your file is held either by a Maharashtra state officer in one of the six Pune nodal divisions or by a central officer in Pune-I or Pune-II, allotted by pincode. If you run payroll, the provident fund figures in the return should agree with what was actually remitted, and Pune has four EPFO regional offices, so we reconcile against the one holding your establishment.
What does the filing cost, and what do we need from you?
CA prepared filing starts at ₹999 and the work runs 3 to 5 days once your file is complete. What moves the number is complexity, never the postcode. A salaried return built on one Form 16 is not the same job as a company return with audited accounts, a fixed asset schedule and related party balances behind it.
The list we ask for is short, and you already hold most of it:
- Form 16, Form 26AS and the Annual Information Statement for the year
- audited financial statements and the tax audit report where an audit applies
- GST returns for the year, so declared and reported turnover can be tied out
- PTEC and PTRC challans from mahagst.gov.in with the payroll register
- bank statements, loan interest certificates and any capital gains statement
- last year's acknowledgement and the loss figure being carried forward
Which Pune businesses are filing this season?
- An auto component manufacturer at Chakan under tax audit, working backwards from 31 October so the audit report and the return move together.
- An IT services and delivery centre operator at Kharadi, matching four advance tax instalments against the final liability.
- An education and test prep institute at Kothrud, where fee receipts and staff salaries both have to reconcile before filing.
- A restaurant and cafe operator at Koregaon Park, whose GST turnover has to line up with the turnover shown in the return.
Founders in Hinjawadi and Baner with salary alongside consulting income are in the same queue, filing two heads of income in a single return.
How we run your return from documents to acknowledgement
- You upload the checklist and we tell you inside a day what is still missing.
- A CA builds the computation, tests it under both regimes and prices the gap between them.
- We reconcile Form 26AS, the Annual Information Statement, the mahagst.gov.in challans and your GST turnover.
- You approve the figures, then we file on the income tax portal and send the acknowledgement.
- We complete e-verification and follow the refund until it lands in your bank account.
Who prepares your return and what do they reconcile?
We file returns for Pune companies, firms, professionals and salaried clients, and the same team carries the PTEC and PTRC side of the year. Our Pune office is at Yashwant Nagar, Near Bharatiya Samajseva, Yerwada, Pune 411006, though nothing about a return needs you to walk in. The engagement runs online with CA and CS support, and you can ask for a callback within 30 minutes. More than 15,000 customers have used LegalX India across services, with 50+ experts behind that figure.
For form selection, the two regimes side by side and the national rules in full, read how income tax return filing works across India.