Complete Compliance Checklist for a New Business

New business is wider than startup

Not every new business is chasing a round. A consultancy, a shop, a small factory, and a software company share a spine and then diverge. The spine is: what you sell, who the legal person is, which taxes apply, and where the money sits. The startup-specific pass, including investor documents and recognition programmes, is the . Use this note when the question is simply how to open without leaving a hole in the first quarter.

Name the activity in verbs. “Consulting on interiors”, “trading packaged staples”, “writing software”. The verb decides sector permissions. A generic checklist that adds every licence in India will waste a month. A checklist that skips the one licence your verb requires will stop the business later. is built for people who have to hold more than one statute in the same week.

Local permissions and the trade you actually do

Municipal trade licences, shop and establishment registration, and professional tax, where your state uses them, are state or local systems. This article does not list fees or dates for any state. Open the state portal for the place you operate, and save the acknowledgement next to the rent deed or ownership proof. If you work only from a home office, read whether that state still expects a shop registration for your facts. Guessing “home offices are exempt” is how the first inspection becomes a surprise.

Sector rows are additive. Food products raise an FSSAI question. Construction raises contractor and building questions. Professional services may raise a council registration for the individual even when the business vehicle is new. Write “not applicable” only after you have named the law you checked. A blank cell is not a decision.

Tax identity: PAN, GST, and income tax

Every vehicle needs a tax identity. A proprietorship uses the individual PAN. A partnership, LLP, or company needs its own PAN. TAN enters when you must deduct tax at source. GST enters when you are liable or when you choose to register. Income-tax filing follows the person who earned the profit. Those are four different questions. Answer them separately.

When the business is not a company

A proprietorship invoices in the proprietor name and PAN, and the profit sits in that person return. A partnership needs a partnership deed, a PAN for the firm, and a clear bank account. There is no ROC annual bundle of the company kind. There is still GST if the supplies require it, and still income tax. Read and the before you assume a small firm is outside both.

When you incorporate

A company or LLP is registered on MCA. Follow if the vehicle is a company: name, incorporation, PAN and TAN, bank, board, then the GST decision. Confirm the live form and any filing window on mca.gov.in. After the number exists, annual and event rows belong on with dates copied from the portal. Incorporating does not complete local licences. The shop or sector permission is still a separate file.

Books from the first receipt

Open a bank account in the name that will appear on the invoice. Pay business costs from that account. A personal UPI that “will be sorted at year end” becomes the reconciliation nobody wants to do. The accounting habit, including how GST and income tax sit on those books, is in . Start the sales register and the purchase register on day one, even if the first month has three lines.

If you will deduct tax on rent, contractors, or professional fees, mark those payments in the register from the start. The rate and the threshold are year-specific. Look them up on the Income Tax Department portal when you design the payment run. A register that only stores “amount paid” cannot support a TDS return later.

A practical scenario

Riya opens an interior consultancy in Jaipur. She starts as a sole proprietor because no investor is in the conversation and she does not need shares. She reads the state portal for shop and professional-tax questions, registers only where that reading says she must, and invoices on her PAN. She does not print a private-limited suffix. GST stays a monthly look at her supplies against the portal rules. She keeps a separate current account from week one.

Six months later a client contract requires a company. She incorporates then, using the registration sequence, and she stops invoicing on the personal PAN the day the company bank account is live. Old invoices stay in the proprietorship return. New invoices are the company. Mixing the two years into one GSTIN would be a different business, and she does not do it. The MCA dates for the new company go on a fresh calendar.

Checklist for week one

1. Write the activity in one sentence and list the permissions that activity usually triggers. 2. Check the state portal for shop, establishment, and professional tax, and save what you file. 3. Choose the vehicle: proprietorship, partnership, LLP, or company. 4. Obtain PAN for that person, and TAN if you will deduct. 5. Decide GST on the GST portal. 6. Open the bank account in the invoicing name. 7. If you incorporate, confirm each MCA form and date on mca.gov.in before it is diarised. 8. Start the books the same week, and name a person who owns the checklist.

Hand the checklist to a living calendar

A checklist you complete in week one becomes a calendar you keep in month twelve. One-time permissions stay in a “licences” folder with their expiry, if the permission expires. Recurring taxes get rows with dates from the GST portal, the income-tax portal, or MCA, each cited. The owner reviews blank date cells every month and fills only what a portal has confirmed. assumes you can already tell those three sources apart. The checklist is finished when every row is either filed, marked not applicable with a reason, or dated from an official page.