Published July 5, 2026 · Updated August 14, 2026 with a full month-by-month deadline table, an entity-specific breakdown, and a FAQ section.
Most compliance failures in Nepal aren't a business deliberately skipping an obligation — they're a deadline nobody was tracking. A basic compliance calendar solves more of this than any amount of after-the-fact cleanup. Here's the short version: registered businesses in Nepal typically juggle monthly VAT and ETDS deadlines (both generally due within 25 days of month-end), an annual income tax return due within three months of fiscal year-end, annual OCR compliance documentation separate from your tax filing, and an annual financial review for most companies — spread across four different authorities that don't cross-reference each other's deadlines. The rest of this guide breaks down exactly what falls when, who it applies to, and how to build a calendar around your specific registrations rather than a generic one.
What's in this guide
- Why a calendar, not just a to-do list
- Monthly recurring obligations
- Annual income tax filing
- OCR annual compliance
- Annual financial review timing
- A full fiscal-year deadline table
- Converting between Nepali and English dates
- Who should own the calendar
- What applies depends on your entity type
- Building your own calendar
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Frequently asked questions
Why a calendar, not just a to-do list
Nepal's compliance framework for a registered business isn't a single deadline — it's a set of independent obligations owed to different authorities, each running on its own schedule. The Inland Revenue Department governs your monthly VAT and TDS filings and your annual income tax return. The Office of the Company Registrar governs your annual compliance documentation, entirely separate from anything IRD tracks. Your local Ward office governs local registration and renewal. None of these systems automatically notifies you when something else is due, and none of them cross-reference each other — which is exactly why a company can be fully current on its tax filings while quietly missing its OCR compliance document, or vice versa, without anyone flagging the gap until it becomes a problem. A calendar solves this not by making the obligations simpler, but by putting all of them in one place with reminders set ahead of each date, rather than relying on memory or on one authority to remind you about another.
Monthly recurring obligations
VAT returns, for registered businesses, are generally due by the 25th of the following Nepali month. This applies to every VAT-registered business regardless of size, and it's a filing obligation even in months where you had minimal or no taxable transactions — a common misconception is that a quiet month means nothing needs to be filed, when in fact a nil return is still a return.
ETDS filing for any TDS deducted during the month follows a similar monthly rhythm, with deposit typically due within 25 days of month-end, filed through the online taxpayer portal. Under the Income Tax Act 2058, the party making a payment — the withholding agent — deducts TDS before paying the recipient and is responsible for depositing it on time; this applies to employers paying salaries, businesses paying consultants or contractors, and anyone else required to withhold tax at source. These are the two obligations that repeat every single month regardless of your business size, and together they're the ones most likely to quietly slip if nobody owns the calendar.
Annual income tax filing
Annual income tax returns are due within three months of the fiscal year-end (Ashoj-end), with a further extension available to Poush-end for those who need it. This is the single highest-stakes annual deadline for most businesses, since it's where your full year's tax position gets reconciled — any shortfall in what monthly TDS or advance payments covered becomes due at this point, and any documentation gaps from earlier in the year become visible all at once. Businesses that keep monthly bookkeeping current generally find this a straightforward reconciliation; those that reconstruct a year of records in the final weeks find it a much bigger project than the deadline itself suggests.
OCR annual compliance
Registered companies have annual compliance documentation due to the Office of the Company Registrar, separate from tax filings — a requirement that's easy to overlook since it doesn't route through the IRD at all. This is one of the clearest examples of why a single tax-focused calendar isn't enough: a company can file its income tax return on time, every year, and still be non-compliant with OCR simply because nobody was tracking a deadline that lives entirely outside the tax system. Newly registered companies also have a separate compliance document to submit to OCR within the early months following registration, distinct from the ongoing annual filing — another date worth marking from day one rather than discovering later. For the exact document checklist and how to actually file it on the OCR portal, see our OCR annual compliance filing checklist.
Annual financial review timing
For companies required to have an annual financial review, this typically needs to be completed and filed alongside your annual compliance documentation — meaning your books need to be review-ready well before the OCR deadline itself, not scrambled together in the final weeks. The annual financial review applies to most registered companies under the Companies Act framework by virtue of registration, not strictly by revenue scale, which surprises founders who assumed a small operation would be exempt. It's an independent examination by a licensed accounting professional with real legal weight attached, and treating it as a rushed formality performed without genuine review protects you far less than keeping monthly records current so review season is a check rather than a reconstruction project.
A full fiscal-year deadline table
Putting the recurring obligations together in one place:
| Obligation | Frequency | Typical deadline | Authority |
|---|---|---|---|
| VAT return | Monthly | 25th of following month | IRD |
| ETDS deposit & filing | Monthly | Within 25 days of month-end | IRD |
| Annual income tax return | Annual | 3 months after fiscal year-end (Ashoj-end), extendable to Poush-end | IRD |
| Annual financial review & filing | Annual | Alongside annual OCR compliance documentation | OCR / Accounting professional |
| OCR annual compliance document | Annual | Per OCR's annual filing cycle | OCR |
| Three-month post-registration document | One-time, early | Early months after registration | OCR |
| Ward registration renewal | Varies by municipality | Set by local Ward office | Ward office |
Treat this as a starting template, not a finished calendar — the next section covers why the exact dates and even which rows apply to you depend on your specific registrations.
What applies depends on your entity type
The specific deadlines that apply to your business depend on your entity type, VAT registration status, and whether you have employees subject to TDS. A VAT-registered company owes the full monthly cycle above. A company not yet VAT-registered skips the monthly VAT return but still owes ETDS if it has employees or makes payments subject to withholding, plus its annual income tax return, OCR compliance, and annual financial review. A Sole Proprietorship, registered primarily through Ward-level and PAN registration rather than a full OCR filing, generally doesn't carry the OCR annual compliance or annual financial review obligations that apply to registered companies, but still owes VAT and TDS filings if registered for either, plus its own annual income tax return. Because the applicable list genuinely differs by structure, a calendar copied from another business's checklist can either miss an obligation that applies to you or include one that doesn't — worth confirming against your specific registrations, ideally with an accountant, rather than assuming a generic list is complete.
Converting between Nepali and English dates
Most of Nepal's compliance deadlines are anchored to the Nepali (Bikram Sambat) calendar — fiscal year-end at Ashoj-end, the extended filing window to Poush-end, and monthly VAT/TDS deadlines tied to the Nepali month. If your business runs its internal planning, invoicing, or project timelines on the Gregorian calendar, as many software tools and international clients do, converting between the two accurately matters more than it might seem. A deadline that's "the 25th of the month" in the Nepali calendar doesn't fall on the same Gregorian date every month, since the two calendars don't align on a fixed offset — which is exactly the kind of quiet miscalculation that can push a filing a day or two late without anyone noticing until a penalty notice arrives. Our free Nepali to English date converter handles this conversion directly, which is useful both for setting compliance reminders accurately and for cross-checking any deadline you see quoted in one calendar system when your own records run on the other.
Who should own the calendar
A compliance calendar is only as reliable as the person or process responsible for checking it. In a small business, that's often the founder personally — which works until the business grows busy enough that compliance competes directly with sales, hiring, or a client crisis for attention, and loses. In a slightly larger operation, it's often an in-house bookkeeper or accountant, which works better but still concentrates the risk in one person's calendar discipline. The more durable version, and the one we build for clients through our accounting services, treats the compliance calendar as a shared system rather than one person's memory — deadlines tracked centrally, reminders that don't depend on any single team member checking a personal to-do list, and a clear owner for each filing so nothing falls into the gap between "I thought you were handling that" and a missed date. The specific structure matters less than the principle: compliance that depends entirely on one person remembering is one bad week away from a missed deadline.
Building your own calendar
A generic calendar is a starting point — the useful version is one built around your specific registrations, with reminders set well before each date rather than on it. In practice, that means:
- List every registration you hold — VAT, PAN, TDS/ETDS, OCR company registration, Ward registration, and any sector-specific license — since each one carries its own filing or renewal obligation.
- Map each registration to its recurring deadline, using the table above as a starting template and confirming the exact dates that apply to your entity type.
- Set reminders well ahead of each date, not on the date itself — a reminder on the 25th for a filing due the 25th gives you no room to fix a problem discovered that morning.
- Keep monthly bookkeeping current rather than reconstructing records at year-end, since nearly every deadline above — the annual return, the financial review, the OCR filing — depends on your books being in order well before the date arrives.
- Review the calendar annually, since fiscal-year budgets periodically shift thresholds, rates, or deadlines — the FY 2083/84 income tax slab reset is a recent example of a change that affected filing calculations without moving the deadline itself.
If maintaining this calendar yourself isn't where you want to spend founder time, our accounting and compliance services build and manage it as part of ongoing engagement — tracking VAT, TDS, OCR, and annual financial review deadlines against your specific registrations so nothing depends on someone remembering.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Treating tax deadlines and OCR deadlines as one calendar. They're tracked by different authorities that don't cross-reference each other — missing one doesn't trigger a warning from the other.
- Skipping VAT returns in quiet months. A nil return is still a required filing, not an obligation that disappears when there's nothing to report.
- Setting reminders on the deadline instead of before it. A same-day reminder leaves no time to fix a problem discovered that morning.
- Copying a generic calendar without checking it against your entity type. A Sole Proprietorship, a non-VAT-registered company, and a VAT-registered company each owe a different subset of these obligations.
- Leaving bookkeeping until the annual return or financial review is due. Nearly every annual deadline depends on records that should have been maintained monthly, not assembled in the final weeks.
Frequently asked questions
Where do sector-specific licenses fit into a compliance calendar?
If your business holds a sector-specific license — an excise license, for instance, which requires annual renewal through the IRD alongside standard PAN and VAT obligations — its renewal date belongs on the same calendar as your tax and OCR deadlines, not tracked separately or left to whoever remembers it applies.
What's the most important deadline on a Nepali business compliance calendar?
There isn't a single most important one — VAT and ETDS recur monthly, while the annual income tax return, OCR compliance documentation, and annual financial review are the highest-stakes annual deadlines. Missing any of them creates a real compliance gap, which is exactly why a calendar covering all of them matters more than tracking just one.
Do I need to file a VAT return in a month with no sales?
Yes. VAT returns are due monthly for registered businesses regardless of transaction volume — a nil return is still a required filing.
Does OCR compliance documentation replace my annual tax return?
No. OCR annual compliance documentation and your annual income tax return are separate requirements owed to separate authorities — filing one doesn't satisfy the other.
Does every company need an annual financial review?
An annual financial review applies to most registered companies under the Companies Act framework by virtue of registration, not strictly by revenue scale — worth confirming your specific obligation rather than assuming a small operation is automatically exempt.
Do Sole Proprietorships need the same compliance calendar as a company?
Not exactly — a Sole Proprietorship generally doesn't carry OCR annual compliance or annual financial review obligations, but still owes VAT and TDS filings if registered for either, plus its own annual income tax return.
What happens if I miss the annual income tax filing deadline?
An extension to Poush-end is generally available beyond the standard three-months-after-Ashoj-end deadline for those who need it — but relying on the extension as a default rather than a genuine buffer is worth avoiding, since it compresses an already tight annual filing season further.
How far ahead should I set reminders for these deadlines?
Well before the date itself, not on it — a reminder set only on the deadline gives no room to fix a document gap or filing issue discovered at the last minute. Building in a buffer of at least a week or two ahead of each deadline is a more workable habit than same-day reminders.
Do compliance deadlines fall on the same Gregorian date every month?
No — because most deadlines are anchored to the Nepali (Bikram Sambat) calendar, their Gregorian equivalent shifts slightly from month to month. If your internal tracking runs on the Gregorian calendar, use a reliable Nepali-to-English date converter rather than assuming a fixed offset, since a small miscalculation can push a filing a day or two late.
Should I build the calendar myself or have an accountant do it?
Either can work, but the calendar is only as reliable as whoever's responsible for checking it. A solo founder juggling the calendar personally is more exposed to a missed date during a busy stretch than a business with an accountant or accounting service tracking deadlines as a dedicated, ongoing responsibility.
Bottom line
A Nepali business's compliance obligations don't live in one place, and no single authority reminds you about another's deadline. The businesses that stay clean treat compliance as several independent calendars merged into one — built around their specific registrations, with reminders set ahead of each date, owned by a clear process rather than one person's memory — instead of a single annual task remembered under pressure each time it comes due. Start by listing every registration your business actually holds, map each one to its recurring deadline using the table above as a template, and revisit the calendar at least once a year as budgets and rates change around it.
