Every April 15, Maryland's State Department of Assessments and Taxation (SDAT) expects an annual report from each incorporated community association in the state. Missing that deadline triggers no call and no visit. The association simply falls out of good standing, and if the report stays unfiled, SDAT moves the entity toward forfeited status: the corporation behind your condominium or HOA can stop existing in the state's eyes while the Board keeps meeting, collecting assessments and signing contracts in its name.
Boards usually learn this at the worst possible moment. A unit goes under contract, the title company runs an entity search and the closing stalls while everyone works out why the seller's association shows up as forfeited. The cure (revival filings, back reports, fees) is routine work for an attorney and a humbling few weeks for a Board.
That April date is one of about a dozen scattered across the year, and they do not come from one place. DC, Maryland and Virginia each run separate filing regimes, the IRS runs a fourth and federal lending standards now add review cycles of their own. Nobody consolidates the list for volunteer boards. Here it is, organized by quarter, with the consequence attached to each date, and we refresh it every January because legislatures keep moving the furniture.
What Happens When an Association Misses a Filing?
Consequences arrive on a ladder and the bottom rungs are cheap. A late corporate filing typically starts with a modest penalty; Virginia, for instance, adds 10 percent (at least $10) to an overdue registration fee. Recoverable, forgettable.
One rung up is status. An association that stops filing drops out of good standing, which is public record consulted at the least convenient moments: a resale settlement, a refinance, a bank re-papering the association's own loan.
The top rung ends the corporation. Maryland forfeits charters. DC can revoke the registration of an entity that ignores its biennial reports. Virginia is the most mechanical of the three: if the annual report or the registration fee is still outstanding on the last day of the fourth month after the due date, the corporation's existence terminates automatically by operation of law. No hearing and no discretion, just a statute executing itself.
The damage rarely stays theoretical. Resales stall when a settlement attorney finds a lapsed entity. Collection cases wobble because an entity that legally does not exist makes an awkward plaintiff. And the liability shield volunteers count on gets murkier at precisely the moment someone is hunting for a target. Reinstatement exists in all three jurisdictions and associations use it every year, but it consumes weeks you will not have in the middle of a closing.
The Year-Round Compliance Calendar
A compliance calendar for a community association is the single schedule of every legally required filing, disclosure and recurring obligation the association must meet during the year: corporate reports to the state, federal tax returns, statutory notices to owners, reserve and insurance requirements and local mandates such as energy benchmarking. It covers deadlines set by statute, by regulators and by the association's own governing documents, each with a date, a responsible person and a consequence for missing it. For boards in DC, Maryland and Virginia, one calendar has to span three state regimes plus federal tax and lending rules, which is why generic national checklists fail here.
Anchor the floating dates before the fixed ones. Virginia ties its corporate obligations to your incorporation anniversary rather than to the calendar: the SCC annual report (no fee) and the $25 annual registration fee both come due by the last day of the month in which the association was incorporated, and the SCC sends notice to your registered agent two months ahead. Associations registered with Virginia's Common Interest Community Board renew that registration annually as well, on the schedule tied to their own filing. Write your association's specific months into everything below.
January Through March: Federal Paperwork and Setup
The year opens with the IRS, not the states.
January 1 (all three jurisdictions, every association). New budgets and assessment changes take effect for calendar-year associations. Confirm the adopted budget, the amounts owners are actually billed and the resale disclosure paperwork all match; mismatches here become owner disputes by February.
January 31 (federal, every association). Form 1099-NEC goes to each unincorporated contractor paid $600 or more last year, and W-2s go to any employees, whether the association is professionally managed or self-managed. The IRS charges per-form penalties that grow the longer the forms run late.
January, no fixed date (all three). Reverify this calendar against primary sources and check the Corporate Transparency Act's status. FinCEN's 2025 interim rule exempted domestic entities from beneficial ownership reporting, so US-formed associations are currently out of scope, but the rule has already changed direction once. Our guide to the Corporate Transparency Act for community associations covers what to watch.
March (all three, working back from April 15). Books go to the CPA now. Associations that treat March as tax month never face the choice between a rushed return and a late one, and if the draft financials come back reading like a foreign language, our primer on association financial statements was written for that moment.
April Through June: The Heaviest Filing Window
Spring stacks the year's hardest deadlines into six weeks.
April 1 (DC, incorporated associations, every second year). The biennial report is due to the Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection. The first one comes due the April after the year the entity registers, then every second April after that. Late filing draws a fee; a report ignored long enough invites revocation of the registration.
April 15 (Maryland, every incorporated association). The SDAT annual report from the top of this article. File it or request an extension by the same date; do neither and the slide from good standing toward forfeiture begins.
April 15 (federal, calendar-year associations). Form 1120-H is due by the 15th day of the fourth month after the fiscal year ends. The election for 1120-H treatment generally must be made by the return's due date including extensions, so a late return without an extension can cost the association that treatment for the year and push it onto the regular corporate return.
May 1 (DC, private buildings over 10,000 square feet). Annual energy benchmarking data is due to the Department of Energy and Environment, and the threshold now reaches buildings over 10,000 square feet, which pulls mid-size condominiums into scope. The same data feeds the Building Energy Performance Standards program, and with BEPS Period 2 beginning in 2027, a building that ignores benchmarking meets its first performance cycle unprepared.
July Through September: New Laws and Lending Reviews
New laws arrive midyear, and so do lender reviews.
July 1 (Virginia, everyone). Most new Virginia laws take effect each July 1, which makes this the date to re-read counsel's legislative summary. Circle one now: HB 444 changes the default judgment procedure for assessment debt effective July 1, 2027, so collection practices set today need review before then. July 1, 2026 also activated Fannie Mae's $50,000 cap on per-unit insurance deductibles, a lending standard rather than a statute but binding in practice.
August 3, 2026 (federal lending, condominiums in all three jurisdictions). Fannie Mae's Lender Letter LL-2026-03, issued March 18, 2026, eliminated the Limited Review as of this date. Conventional condo loans now go through full project review, meaning questionnaires about budget, reserves, insurance and litigation on every sale. Boards that keep those answers current close units; boards that scramble watch contracts die at underwriting. We traced what the 2026 lending changes mean for assessments earlier in this series.
September (Virginia condominiums and POAs by statute; smart practice everywhere). Before budget drafting starts, confirm the reserve study sits inside Virginia's five-year cycle and that the annual review of reserves is documented in the minutes. DC imposes no statutory reserve-study mandate, but with Fannie Mae raising its reserve minimum from 10 to 15 percent of assessment income on January 4, 2027, the lending market now enforces what the DC Council never wrote.
October Through December: Budgets, Reserves and Year-End
Budget season dominates the fall, and Maryland boards now carry statutory reserve duties through it.
October 1 (Maryland, everyone). Most new Maryland laws take effect October 1. The 2025 reserve legislation (HB 292 and SB 63, effective October 2025) is the standing example: fund reserves under a plan that follows the reserve study, use recognized funding methods, repay borrowed reserves within five years and put hardship deviations to a two-thirds vote. A fall budget that ignores the funding plan is out of compliance the day it passes.
October and November (all three, date set by your bylaws). Annual meeting and election season. The corporate statutes expect the meeting your bylaws promise, and skipping it hands owners a court remedy along with a reason to distrust everything else the Board does. Most of the patterns in our rundown of common DC governance pitfalls begin at a mishandled annual meeting.
Master policy renewal (Virginia, whenever yours renews; many renew at year-end). Virginia requires associations to disclose insurance deductible responsibilities to owners, and renewal is the natural trigger to reissue that notice. Skip it and the first serious water loss becomes a dispute over who insures the gap.
December 31 (Maryland, calendar-year associations). Under the same 2025 reserve law, the year's reserve deposits belong in the account by the last day of the fiscal year. Waiting for spring cash flow is no longer an option; the two-thirds hardship vote is the only sanctioned detour.
Year-end (all three). Close the books for the CPA, verify the registered agent's address (state notices go to the agent, and a stale address is how entities get terminated without hearing a warning) and put the calendar review on January's agenda. Calendar-year budgets taking effect January 1, 2027 should already carry the 15 percent reserve line.
How Should a Board Actually Run This Calendar?
Assign every deadline a name. Not "the Board", not "management": a person, recorded in the minutes, with the filing confirmation stored where the next treasurer can find it. Missed filings almost always trace back to an obligation everyone assumed someone else owned, usually across a Board transition or a management change.
Put the full calendar on the January agenda and verify each date against the primary source, because dates move. DC has shifted its benchmarking deadline and threshold in recent years, Maryland rewrote reserve law in 2025 and Virginia already has changes queued for 2027. A calendar copied forward unchecked is a liability with page numbers.
Then settle in writing what the manager owns. A management agreement can delegate the work of filing; it cannot delegate the obligation, which stays with the association no matter who drops it. Ask which items on this page your manager files for you, get the answer in writing and calendar the rest yourselves.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there one deadline that applies to every association in all three jurisdictions?
The federal tax return comes closest. Every association files Form 1120-H or Form 1120 by the 15th day of the fourth month after its fiscal year ends, which means April 15 for calendar-year associations. The January 31 information returns run a close second, and everything at the state level depends on where the association sits.
What happens if our association never filed its annual report?
The corporate status has likely already lapsed: forfeited in Maryland, revoked in DC, terminated in Virginia once the four-month grace period ran. All three jurisdictions allow reinstatement or revival by filing the missed reports and paying the accumulated fees, and associations complete the process every year. Handle it now on your own schedule rather than mid-closing on somebody else's.
Do self-managed associations have the same obligations?
Identical ones. No statute in DC, Maryland or Virginia trims filing, tax or disclosure duties because an association has no professional manager. Self-managed boards hold every deadline personally, which is why this calendar tends to matter most to them.
Who is personally responsible if a deadline is missed, the board or the manager?
The obligation belongs to the association, and the Board answers for the association. A manager who contractually agreed to handle a filing and dropped it may owe the association for the resulting damage, but the state and the IRS look to the entity and its officers first. Directors who can show they tracked deadlines and delegated them deliberately stand on far firmer ground than directors who never asked.
How do we know which jurisdiction's rules apply to us?
The property's location controls the community association statute, and the state of incorporation controls the corporate filings. For nearly every association those are the same place. Where documents show incorporation in a different jurisdiction than the property, which happens with some older associations, the Board owes corporate filings in both and should confirm it has a registered agent in each.
EJF Real Estate Services has managed community associations in Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia since 1996, and maintains a jurisdiction-specific compliance calendar for each of the 650+ communities in its portfolio, with a named owner for every filing and each date reverified against primary sources every January. If your Board is not certain its association is in good standing today, or would rather these deadlines were tracked by people who file them every week, request a proposal at ejfrealestate.com/request-proposal or call 202-537-1801.
