Registration, approval and notification Became Form 186

Form 40C

Application for recognition

What this form is

Form 40C belongs to the regime of the Income-tax Act, 1961. The same ground is now covered by Form 186 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026. It is an application. Nothing follows from filing it by itself; what follows is an order, and the order is what matters. The assessee signs and files this himself.

Which provision requires it

Neither side of the department’s description names a section or a rule, so there is nothing here we can point at without guessing. The enabling provision is on the form itself.

What it became under the 2026 Rules

The description changed with the number, and the change is worth reading: the 2026 wording points at the Income-tax Act, 2025, and a great deal of what used to sit in a section of the 1961 Act now sits in a Schedule.

Under the 2026 Rules	What the department calls it
Form 186	Application for recognition of provident fund under Part-A of the Schedule XI to the Act

Where you meet it

You meet it when something has to be sanctioned before it will work — a trust registered, a fund approved, a project notified. The approval is prospective and conditional; the conditions on the order are as much a part of it as the approval itself.

Near it

Other forms we have put in the same group — registration, approval and notification.

Form 3CF, Form 3CG, Form 3CH, Form 3CJ, Form 3CK, Form 3CL, Form 3CM, Form 3CN, Form 3CO, Form 3CP, Form 3CQ, Form 3CR

Get the form

Published by the Income Tax Department. The link goes to their file, not a copy of it — a form is revised without notice and a stale copy is worse than none. Both are here because a notice, an order or a judgment may name either number.

Form 40C — 1962 Rules (PDF) Fillable version Form 186 — 2026 Rules (PDF) All forms at the department

What here is the department’s and what is ours. The form number, the sentence describing it, and the pairing of the old form with the form it became are all taken from the Income Tax Department’s own published forms concordance, and are reproduced as the department wrote them — including its abbreviations and its occasional typing errors. Everything else on this page is ours: the plain-English account of what the form is, the reading of which provision requires it, the grouping the form sits in, the note on where you meet it, and the selection of cases. The department has not said that this form serves that section; we have read that off the description and off its own section concordance, and we can be wrong. Before you rely on any of it, open the form.