It is exempt under s.11(1)(d) if the donor gave a specific direction that it form part of the corpus — but since the Finance Act 2021 only if it is also invested or deposited in one of the s.11(5) modes maintained specifically for the corpus. Spending it is not application of income. If you do spend it, you can treat the amount as application later, in the year you put it back into a s.11(5) corpus investment, provided that happens within five years and the original spending was on or after 1 April 2021. Money borrowed works the same way round: applying the borrowing is not application, repaying it is.
Section 11(1)(d) exempts "income in the form of voluntary contributions made with a specific direction that they shall form part of the corpus of the trust or institution". Two things have to be true of the receipt for it to be a corpus donation at all: it must be a voluntary contribution, and the donor must have given a specific direction that it goes to corpus. The direction has to come from the donor. A resolution of the trustees deciding to treat a general donation as corpus does not make it one, and a receipt that merely says 'corpus' with nothing from the donor behind it is the first thing an officer will attack.
The character of the receipt is a matter of the donor's direction, not of the trust's registration. The Tribunal has held that a corpus donation received by a trust which holds no registration under s.12A or s.12AA is still a capital receipt in its hands — that is the point in Versova Kokni Sunni Jamat Trust v. CPC, which this library already carries.
What changed in 2021 is the condition attached. Since the Finance Act 2021, the exemption for a corpus donation is available only if the amount is invested or deposited in one or more of the forms or modes specified in s.11(5) maintained specifically for such corpus. Two words in that do the work. 'Specifically' means the corpus investments have to be identifiable as corpus investments and kept apart from the trust's other funds — a single pooled fixed deposit covering corpus and general funds is not what the provision asks for. And 'maintained' means the condition is continuing, not a one-off at the time of receipt. If the condition is violated, the department's own guidance states the consequence: the amount of the exempt corpus donation is deemed to be the income of the institution of the previous year during which the violation took place. So the failure is not merely a disallowance in the year of receipt; it produces income in the year things go wrong, which may be several years later.
The corollary is that corpus money is not spending money. Under the scheme introduced by the same amendment, an application to the objects made out of the corpus is not treated as application of income in the year it is made. What the law gives instead is a deferred credit: where the corpus is later replenished by investing or depositing the amount back in a s.11(5) mode, that reinvestment is treated as application of income in the year it is made, provided it happens within five years from the end of the year in which the corpus was originally used, and provided the original use was not before 1 April 2021. Amounts spent out of corpus before that date get nothing — replenishing them is not application at all. Loans and borrowings work the other way round from the way practitioners usually assume, and the sequence matters. An application to the objects made out of a loan or borrowing is not application when it is made. What is treated as application is the repayment: when the loan or borrowing is repaid out of the income of a previous year, the repayment is allowed as application in the year of repayment, to the extent repaid. The taxguru note on these amendments records that the corpus provisions, including the five-year limit, apply in the same way to applications made out of loans and borrowings, so the repayment has to be made within five years from the end of the previous year in which the application out of the loan was made.
The practical arithmetic of this is easy to get wrong in the year of receipt. A corpus donation is not part of the income against which the 85% application test in s.11(1) is run — it is excluded from total income by s.11(1)(d) and is not required to be applied to the extent of 85%. But the moment it is spent, it stops earning that treatment and does not earn application credit either, so a trust which funds a building out of corpus can find that it has neither exempt corpus nor application, and a shortfall against the 85% test on its ordinary income that it did not expect.
The s.11(5) list itself — the modes in which both accumulated income under s.11(2) and corpus have to be held — is set out in the companion page in this library on applying 85%, accumulating the rest, and where you may park it. Read the two together: the list is the same, but the corpus investments have to be separately identifiable as corpus, which the accumulation rules do not require in the same terms.
Corpus donations are the one receipt a trust can take without an 85% application obligation, which is why building funds and endowment appeals are structured that way. Since 2021 that treatment is conditional, continuing, and enforced by a deeming provision that produces income in the year of breach rather than in the year of receipt — so a trust that quietly spent a building fund three years ago may be carrying an exposure nobody has computed. It also changes fundraising documentation: without the donor's written direction there is no corpus donation to defend, whatever the receipt book says.
We charge fees for our public utility work. Does that cost us charitable status under s.2(15)?
A binding decision that covers my point was never considered when my order was passed. Is that a mistake apparent from the record?
My trust already has registration under section 12A. Can the Assessing Officer go behind it and re-examine whether the objects are charitable?
Our trust was formed weeks ago and has done nothing yet. Can registration be refused for that?
The Commissioner has refused my trust registration under section 12AA because our objects are tied to one religious community — can he refuse registration on that ground?
My body is a statutory authority, not a trust under any public trust law. Can it still be registered as a charitable institution under section 12A?
My trust never filed the accumulation notice for the year. Can I file it now, after the assessment was completed, and still get the exemption?
We treated a building's full cost as application of income. Can we also claim depreciation on it?
Every page in this library links to what it was written from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.