The Corporate Compliance Calendar

An established company rarely falls out of compliance through ignorance. It falls through drift: the accountant who kept the dates in his head retires, the AGM slips a month, the slipped AGM delays the annual return, and eighteen months later the company discovers its filing history the way outsiders do — by reading it. This page lays out the recurring obligations of a Pakistani company as what they really are: not a list but a machine, with dependencies, and with a board that owns it. It states the position as of July 2026; deadlines, forms, and rates move by statute and notification, which is why every precise date below is bracketed rather than asserted. The startup hub carries a version for early-stage companies crossing thresholds for the first time; this page assumes the registrations exist and the question is keeping the machine running.

Four regimes, one year

The obligations arrive from four directions at once. The SECP administers the Companies Act, 2017 layer — the corporate record, meetings, accounts, and returns — through the eZfile portal. The FBR administers income tax under the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 and federal sales tax under the Sales Tax Act, 1990, through IRIS. The provincial revenue authorities tax services under their own statutes, each with its own portal and its own monthly return. And the employer institutions — EOBI, the provincial social security bodies, and the workers' funds regimes — run cycles of their own. Each regime has its own logic of punishment: escalating fees at the SECP, default surcharge and Active Taxpayers List consequences at the FBR, arrears with penalties at the employer funds. A calendar that lists obligations without naming each one's regime and portal will fail the moment its author leaves.

The Companies Act chain: audit, AGM, accounts, Form A

The corporate year is a dependency chain, and this is the fact most calendars miss. The financial year closes. The audit must then be completed, because the audited financial statements are laid before the annual general meeting. The AGM, held within the statutory window after year end [PERIOD — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER] on notice issued within the statutory notice period, receives the accounts and appoints the auditor for the coming year. The annual return on Form A is then filed within the prescribed period keyed to the AGM [PERIOD — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER], and companies of the relevant classes file the financial statements themselves [CLASSES — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER].

Read as a chain, every deadline in it is really an audit deadline: an audit that starts late compresses everything downstream until the company is choosing between a rushed audit and a late AGM. Boards that book the auditor's fieldwork at year end, rather than after it, rarely meet the rest of the chain in a hurry.

Around the chain sit the standing items. The election of directors runs on a three-year term under the Act, and an expired board discovered mid-transaction is a genuinely awkward finding [ELECTION PROVISIONS — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. Board meetings must be held and minuted on the cadence the law and the articles require. Companies above the relevant thresholds must have a company secretary and, in higher classes, other named officers [THRESHOLDS — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. And the registers — members, directors and officers, ultimate beneficial ownership under section 123A — are written up as events occur, because a register reconstructed at diligence reads exactly like what it is.

Event filings that cut across the calendar

The calendar's recurring lines are punctured by event-driven ones: a director resigns, shares are allotted or transferred, the registered office moves, the company grants security over assets. Each triggers its own return inside its own statutory window, and one of them — registration of charges — carries a consequence beyond fees, because an unregistered charge can leave the lender unsecured against a liquidator and the company in breach of its facility [WINDOWS — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. The discipline that works is procedural, not heroic: no corporate event is complete until its filing is made and its register entry written, in the same week, by a named person.

The tax year: return, advance tax, withholding

The company's tax life runs on a different axis. Its tax year is defined under the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 — the normal year ends 30 June, with special years available to certain classes [TO BE VERIFIED] — and the annual return is due on a statutory date keyed to that year end [DUE DATES — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. Filing keeps the company on the Active Taxpayers List; lapsing off it raises the withholding rates counterparties apply to the company's own receipts, a same-month cash cost that makes this the least forgiving line on the calendar.

Two obligations recur inside the year. Advance tax under section 147 is paid quarterly against an estimate of the current year's liability — an estimate that must be revisited when the year improves or deteriorates, because a stale estimate produces either default surcharge or a needless loan to the exchequer. And withholding: from every salary run and most vendor payments, the company deducts tax as an agent, deposits it within the prescribed time, and reports it in the statements filed under section 165 on the current cycle [CYCLE AND DATES — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. Withholding is where established companies quietly accumulate their largest tax exposure, because a failure costs the company someone else's tax plus surcharge, discovered years later.

Sales tax, month in month out

Sales tax is the calendar's metronome. A company selling goods files monthly with the FBR under the Sales Tax Act, 1990; a company rendering services files monthly with each provincial authority where it is registered — each province and the federal capital runs its own statute and portal — and a business doing both does both [DUE DATES — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. Nil months are filed, not skipped. Because the return is relentless, it is the first obligation to fail when the finance team is stretched — a run of missed sales tax returns is usually the earliest symptom that the compliance machine has stopped. Treat it as the canary.

The employer cycle: EOBI, social security, and the profit-linked funds

The people side of the calendar runs monthly and annually at once. Monthly: contributions to EOBI under the Employees' Old-Age Benefits Act, 1976 and to the provincial social security institution under the Provincial Employees' Social Security Ordinance, 1965 framework, each by its prescribed date, each reconciled to actual headcount rather than last year's [DATES, THRESHOLDS AND RATES — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. Annually, and tied to the accounts rather than the payroll: the workers' profit-linked regimes. The Companies Profits (Workers' Participation) Act, 1968 requires qualifying companies to allocate a share of profits to the workers' fund, and the workers' welfare fund legislation adds its own levy — both complicated, post-devolution, by provincial enactments whose reach remains contested [APPLICABILITY, RATES AND PROVINCIAL POSITION — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. Because these compute from the audited accounts, they belong on the calendar as a closing step of the accounts cycle, owned jointly by finance and whoever signs the tax return.

Making it a board instrument

What separates companies that stay compliant from companies that used to be is not knowledge but design. Four features do the work. The calendar is one document, and every line carries four fields: the obligation, its statutory source, its date, and a named owner with a named backup. It is built backwards from the financial year end, so the dependency chain is visible rather than discovered. It is reconciled quarterly against eZfile and IRIS, because the portals are the regulators' version of the truth and the company's should never differ from it by surprise. And twice a year the whole calendar, with status against every line, goes to the board — under the directors' duty provisions of the Companies Act, 2017 the state of this machine is the board's business, and obligations with board visibility get done. A legal health check, covered elsewhere in this hub, photographs the company's position once; the calendar is what keeps the photograph true between sittings.