Charitable Trust Registration

A charitable trust needs three registrations, each with its own purpose and authority. The first is the trust itself — the deed executed and registered under the Indian Trusts Act 1882 or the state public-trust law, which makes the trust a legal entity able to hold property and open a bank account. The second is s.12AB of the Income-tax Act 1961 — provisional via Form 10A, full via Form 10AB — which makes the trust's income exempt under s.11, subject to the 85% application-to-charitable-objects test. The third is s.80G approval, which makes donations deductible to the donor.

The order matters. The trust must exist as a legal entity before the tax registrations can attach to it; the 12AB registration must be valid before 80G is granted; and the 80G approval is what makes donors actually give. Each step is a separate filing with its own documentation, which is why the engagement is sequenced rather than parallel.

The Trusts-Act registration is the legal birth; the 12AB and 80G registrations are the financial life. Without 12AB, the trust's income is taxed like any other entity's — and a charity's income is almost entirely donations, so the tax bill lands on the corpus. Without 80G, donors cannot deduct, and corporate and HNI donors stop giving. The two registrations together are what every charity funder checks before writing a cheque.

The ongoing obligation is the annual audit report: Form 10B (or 10BB for the smaller trusts) filed before the ITR-7 due date, evidencing the 85% application test. A missing or late report can trigger denial of the exemption for that year and notices under the Income-tax Act. The annual calendar we hand over keeps the exemption intact year after year.