Running a charitable trust or NGO comes with a compliance layer most founders don't fully appreciate until a renewal deadline sneaks up or a donor asks for a valid 80G certificate that's quietly expired. The rules around trust taxation have also shifted meaningfully with the Income-tax Act, 2025 — new terminology, renumbered sections, and a transition period that's easy to misread if you're still going by what applied a few years ago. Here's where things actually stand.
People often use "12A registration" and "80G approval" interchangeably, but they serve entirely different purposes:
Most established trusts hold both. A new trust typically needs to apply for both together, since Form 10AB now allows a single application covering both renewals simultaneously.
This is the part causing the most confusion right now, so it's worth being precise about it. Under the new Act, charitable trusts and institutions are referred to as Registered Non-Profit Organisations (RNPOs), and the governing provisions have moved:
The good news, under Section 355 — the transitional provision — is that existing registrations granted under the old Sections 12A, 12AA, 12AB, or 10(23C) continue to remain valid until their original expiry date. There's no need to reapply just because the Act changed. From 1st April 2026, every existing registered trust is automatically treated as an RNPO, and renewal — when it eventually falls due — happens under the new Section 332 framework, still using Form 10AB.
In short: if your registration hasn't expired yet, nothing changes for you right now except the label. The renewal process itself, when the time comes, stays procedurally similar.
A newly formed trust doesn't get permanent registration straight away:
A trap worth knowing about: if a trust commences charitable activities during its provisional period, it must apply for regular registration within 6 months of that commencement — not whenever the 3-year provisional window happens to end. Many new trusts assume they have the full three years and lose their exemption by missing this earlier trigger.
For regular registration, validity is now either 5 years or 10 years, depending on income level. Under an amendment from the Finance Act, 2025, if the trust's total income (computed without applying Sections 11/12 exemptions) stays under ₹5 crore in each of the two immediately preceding years, the renewed registration is granted for the longer 10-year term instead of the earlier default 5 years.
Renewal always has to be filed at least 6 months before expiry — not on the expiry date. A registration ending 31st March 2027 needs its Form 10AB filed by around 30th September 2026. Waiting until closer to expiry risks a gap between the old registration lapsing and the new one being granted, during which the trust effectively loses its exemption.
This is the single most important number for any charitable trust to track. To stay tax-exempt, a trust must apply at least 85% of its income toward its charitable or religious objects during the year. If it applies 85% or more, taxable income works out to nil.
If less than 85% is applied and the shortfall isn't handled through accumulation, that unapplied portion becomes taxable. Trusts do have a release valve here: unapplied income can be accumulated for up to 5 years, provided the trust files Form 10 and invests the accumulated funds in the specified modes (government securities, notified deposits, and similar). Miss this filing, and the accumulation option isn't available — the shortfall gets taxed in the year it arose.
A trust can have valid 12AB and 80G registration and still fall out of compliance through a completely different route: not reporting its donations correctly. Any trust approved under Section 80G(5)(viii) that receives donations eligible for donor deduction must file Form 10BD — a donor-wise statement listing every eligible donation received during the year — and then issue Form 10BE, the donation certificate, to each individual donor. Both are due by 31st May following the end of the financial year. If the trust received no eligible donations that year, this filing isn't required, but if it did and skips this step, donors effectively lose their claimed deduction and the trust faces its own penalty.
Once a trust's total income before exemption exceeds the basic exemption limit, its accounts must be audited, and the audit report filed in Form 10B or Form 10BB, depending on the trust's income level and nature of activities. This audit report has to be filed before the trust's income tax return, and the figures in both need to align — a mismatch here is one of the more common reasons a trust's exemption gets questioned during assessment.
A specific rule under Section 115BBC taxes anonymous donations — where the trust doesn't maintain the donor's name, address, and other identifying details — at a flat 30%, though a small threshold (the higher of 5% of total donations or ₹1 lakh) is excluded from this before the tax applies. Wholly religious trusts are generally outside this rule, but trusts with both religious and charitable objects, or purely charitable ones, need to keep proper donor records to avoid this tax hitting genuine donations that simply weren't documented carefully enough.
Receiving contributions from outside India isn't covered by 12AB or 80G at all — it requires separate registration under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010 (FCRA) with the Ministry of Home Affairs, along with a dedicated FCRA bank account and annual returns. A trust that accepts foreign funding without this registration is in violation regardless of how compliant its income tax filings are.
Section 115TD imposes what's often called an "exit tax" — at the maximum marginal rate — on a trust's accumulated income and assets if it converts into a non-charitable form, merges with an entity that isn't similarly registered, or fails to transfer its remaining assets to another 12AB/80G-registered charitable entity upon dissolution. This is designed specifically to prevent charitable assets, built up tax-free over years, from being diverted for private benefit at the point of winding down.
The most frequent misstep is treating the 6-month-before-expiry renewal deadline as a soft suggestion rather than a firm cutoff — by the time a trust realises its registration has lapsed, reinstating continuity often isn't straightforward and may require a fresh application rather than a simple renewal. A close second is skipping Form 10BD/10BE because the trust assumes its 80G approval alone is enough, only to have donors come back asking why their deduction was denied. And several trusts accumulate unapplied income without filing Form 10, discovering only at assessment that the accumulation wasn't validly claimed and the amount is now taxable.
We handle both the registration and renewal process for trusts — filing Form 10A or Form 10AB with complete documentation, tracking the 85% application requirement against actual expenditure, and making sure Form 10BD/10BE go out on time so your donors' deductions stay intact. If your trust receives foreign contributions, we also help coordinate FCRA compliance alongside your income tax registrations, so nothing falls through the gap between the two frameworks.
They serve different purposes — 12AB exempts the trust's own income, while 80G lets your donors claim a deduction. Most active trusts need both, and a single Form 10AB application can now cover renewal of both together.
No. Under the transitional Section 355 provision, existing registrations continue to remain valid until their original expiry date. Only the terminology (Registered Non-Profit Organisation) and the future renewal section (332, instead of 12AB) have changed.
The shortfall becomes taxable unless it's validly accumulated by filing Form 10 and investing the amount in the prescribed modes, for up to 5 years.
Your donors may lose the ability to claim their 80G deduction for that year's donation, and the trust itself can face a penalty for the delay, so this deadline (31st May) is worth tracking as closely as the tax filing deadline itself.
Yes. If the trust's total income (before exemption) stays under ₹5 crore in each of the two years preceding renewal, the regular registration granted is valid for 10 years instead of the earlier standard 5 years.
No. Foreign contributions require separate registration under the FCRA, 2010, regardless of the trust's income tax registration status.
Talk to Legal Dev and we'll handle the documentation and filing.