The 30 September FLA revision: what companies that filed on provisional figures still owe.

Companies that filed their FLA return on unaudited numbers by 31 July have until 30 September to revise on audited accounts — and the revision cannot be filed until the RBI grants permission on FLAIR.

Update, 30 September 2026. This article was first published on 28 September stating that the tax audit report date for AY 2026-27 had not been extended. Later that same day the CBDT issued Circular No. 07/2026, moving the audit report to 21 October 2026 and the corresponding ITR to 21 November 2026. The tax audit section below has been rewritten. The FLA position has not changed — the CBDT cannot extend an RBI deadline, and the 30 September FLA revision still stands today.

Tuesday 30 September 2026 was being watched almost entirely for one deadline — the tax audit report. That one has now moved. The quieter one has not, and it falls today.

If your company filed its FLA return for FY 2025-26 on provisional, unaudited figures, the revision on audited accounts is due by 30 September. Most companies with foreign investment on the balance sheet did file on provisional numbers, because the return fell due before the audit was signed. Very few have gone back.

Why so many filed provisional

The FLA return — the RBI's annual census of Foreign Liabilities and Assets, filed on the FLAIR portal — is ordinarily due 15 July. For FY 2025-26 the RBI extended that to 31 July 2026.

Even with the extra fortnight, 31 July arrives before most statutory audits are signed. The RBI's position is that this is not a reason to miss the date: where the accounts are not audited in time, the return is filed on unaudited figures, and then revised on the audited accounts by the end of September if the numbers have changed.

That second half is an obligation, not a courtesy. A company that filed provisional figures in July and left it there has an incomplete filing on record, not a completed one.

The step that makes 30 September earlier than it looks

You cannot simply log in on the 30th and overwrite last time's numbers.

A revised FLA return is not filed the way the original was. The entity first has to raise a request on the FLAIR portal for permission to file a revised return, and the revision can only be submitted once that permission is granted. There is a person and a queue between your request and your ability to file.

Which means the practical deadline is not 30 September. It is whenever you need to start so that the permission comes through before 30 September. If the request goes in on Tuesday morning, the date is already at risk.

Who this actually catches

The FLA return is due from every Indian entity that has foreign direct investment received or overseas direct investment made on its books at any point in the year — and it remains due even in a year with no fresh transaction, as long as the balance is still there. On our desks that is:

• Indian subsidiaries of foreign parents, including ones that have been dormant for years but still show the parent's share capital.
• Startups with any foreign investor on the cap table, including through a SAFE or convertible instrument already converted.
• Companies that have flipped or reverse-flipped, where one side of the structure still holds investment in the other.
• Indian companies with overseas subsidiaries or JVs, where the ODI sits on the asset side.
• LLPs with foreign capital contribution, which are covered and routinely forget they are.

If you filed in July on provisional numbers and the audited figures came out identical, no revision is needed. In practice they rarely do — audit adjustments to share premium, retained earnings, reserves or the year-end exchange rate all move the numbers the FLA return reports.

What it costs to let it slide

Late or incomplete FLA submission attracts a Late Submission Fee of ₹7,500 per return, which is the cheap outcome. The expensive outcome is that a missing or wrong FLA return is a FEMA contravention, and FEMA contraventions are cleaned up through compounding, with penalties sized against the amount involved.

The second-order cost is the one that hurts more often. An unreconciled FEMA filing history surfaces in diligence, and it surfaces at the worst possible time — mid-raise, mid-acquisition, or when a foreign parent wants to repatriate. A ₹7,500 fee three years ago becomes a week of transaction delay today.

And the tax audit, which did move

On 28 September 2026 the CBDT issued Circular No. 07/2026, exercising its powers under Section 119 of the Income-tax Act, 1961 read with Section 536 of the Income-tax Act, 2025. For AY 2026-27:

• the tax audit report moves from 30 September to 21 October 2026; and
• the corresponding ITR moves from 31 October to 21 November 2026.

Read the scope carefully before you relax. The relief runs to persons covered by Serial No. 2 of the Table below Explanation 2 to Section 139(1) — ordinary audit cases. It is not a blanket 21-day shift of everything falling due this autumn.

In particular, if you have an international transaction and file Form 3CEB under Section 92E, you sit in a different category. The accountant's report stays at 31 October 2026 and the ITR at 30 November 2026 unless the CBDT says otherwise separately. That catches a large share of our clients precisely because they have a foreign parent or a foreign subsidiary — the same companies reading this page about their FLA return. Do not read "21 October" into a 92E file.

And note the shape of the relief: 21 days, not the 31 October that the representations and the Rajasthan High Court writ had asked for. An extension arrived; the extension that was requested did not.

One more 30 September date that has not moved: Form 10B / 10BB for trusts and institutions, due a month ahead of the ITR-7 date. Filing the wrong one of the two is treated as not filing at all.

What to do between now and Tuesday

1. Pull up the FLA return your company filed in July and check whether it was marked provisional. The CBDT's audit extension does nothing for this — different statute, different regulator.
2. Compare the four or five figures it reported against the audited financials. If nothing moved, you are done.
3. If anything moved, raise the revision request on FLAIR today, not on the deadline.
4. If you discover you did not file at all in July, that is a different and larger problem — and it does not get smaller by waiting for the next cycle.

How Advisory Monks Consulting helps

We maintain the FEMA filing calendar for companies with foreign investment on either side of the balance sheet as part of our cross-border tax and FEMA work, which means we know in July which clients will be filing provisional and will owe a September revision — and we schedule it then rather than discovering it now. Where the history is already broken, we scope the compounding exposure honestly before anyone commits to a route.

If you are not sure whether your FLA return went in, or went in complete, that is a ten-minute check and worth making before Tuesday.

General information, not advice. Deadline positions are as at 30 September 2026; verify the current position before relying on it.

This note is general guidance, not tax or legal advice. Positions depend on your specific facts — speak with a partner before acting.