Section 12A(1)(ac)(iii)

Section 12A(1)(ac)(iii) — the law in short

What the courts have decided on section 12A(1)(ac)(iii), in one screen. Read this first; open an entry when you need the facts, the reasoning and the source.

• Munjal BCU Centre of Innovation and Entrepreneurship v Commissioner of Income Tax (Exemptions) High CourtHelps taxpayer
  The department only uploaded the show cause notice on the e-filing portal and never emailed it to me, then passed an order when I did not reply. Is that valid service?
  No. The Punjab and Haryana High Court held that merely placing a notice on the department's e-portal is not service. Section 282(1) and rule 127 prescribe the ways a communication may be delivered or transmitted, and for electronic delivery rule 127(2)(b) requires it to go to one of the specified email addresses. Nothing in those provisions allows communication to be presumed from an upload. An individual or company is not expected to keep the department's portal open at all times. The order cancelling registration under section 12A(1)(ac)(iii) was quashed and a fresh hearing directed.
• Advaya Charitable Foundation v CIT (Exemptions), Mumbai ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  My Form 10AB for final registration under s.12AB was rejected as time-barred because I missed the 30 June 2024 date in Circular 7/2024. Is anything left to me?
  Yes. From 1 October 2024 a proviso to s.12A(1)(ac) lets the Principal Commissioner or Commissioner condone a delay in filing the application where he considers there is reasonable cause, and the Tribunal restored the matter to the CIT(E) with liberty to the trust to make a condonation application. The delay itself was not in dispute; what saved the trust was that the rejection order recorded no defect in its objects, its activities or its documents, its bona fides were not questioned, and the delay did not prima facie appear deliberate.
• Haji Pir Mohmad Yusuf Waqf v CIT (Exemption), Ahmedabad ITATHelps departmentNo later treatment found
  The CIT(E) has rejected my Form 10AB and cancelled my provisional registration on the ground that my objects benefit only one religious community. What is the Revenue's case and how does it succeed?
  It succeeds where the objects on their face are confined to one community and the trust files no evidence that it has not incurred expenditure on those objects. The Tribunal dismissed the appeal, finding no infirmity in an order which rejected the Form 10AB application under s.12A(1)(ac)(iii) and cancelled the provisional registration on the footing of a specified violation under clause (d) of the Explanation to s.12AB(4).
• Lakulish Sanatan Sanskriti Prabodhan Abhiyan v CIT (Exemption), Ahmedabad ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  I did not file the Rule 17A documents in time and the CIT(E) rejected my Form 10AB, cancelled the provisional registration and directed computation of tax under s.115TD. Can a rejection for non-filing carry all that?
  Not without an inquiry into the merits. The Tribunal set the order aside and restored the matter for de novo consideration, holding that the CIT(E) had rejected the application solely for non-filing of documents, after only two notices at very short intervals, without any verification or inquiry, and that procedural lapses alone should not result in denial of substantial justice. It did not decide the s.115TD point, which was raised only in argument.
• MAA Sharda Kothari Foundation v CIT (Exemption), Ahmedabad ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  The CIT(E) rejected my Form 10AB as premature because the trust had not yet started activities or received donations. Can he do that?
  No — not on that ground alone. Section 12A(1)(ac)(iii) fixes only the outer date by which a provisionally registered trust must apply for regular registration; it contains no bar on applying earlier, and rejecting an application as premature because activities had not commenced by the date of filing is not in accordance with the legislative intent of that clause read with s.12AB(1)(b).
• Bhagwandas Zalani Family Charitable Trust v CIT (Exemption), Bhopal ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  My trust filed Form 10BD for the whole financial year although its s.80G provisional approval began mid-year, so Forms 10BE were generated for pre-approval donations too. The CIT (Exemption) has refused final registration and approval on that ground. Is that a valid reason?
  Not on its own. The Indore Bench held that a wrong filing of information in Form 10BD does not mean the trust's activities are not genuine, and that the requirement was new from 1 April 2021 with sub-rule (3)(i) of Rule 18AB in terms speaking of all donations of the same nature paid during the financial year, so a trust could honestly have read it as covering the whole year. Because the trust filed fresh evidence — declarations from donors that they had never been given the Forms 10BE and had claimed no deduction — the matter was remanded for fresh consideration.
• Imam Ahmed Raza Educational and Welfare Trust v CIT (Exemptions), Bangalore ITATHelps departmentNo later treatment found
  I withdrew my Form 10AB before the CIT(E), he then passed an order recording the withdrawal and rejecting the form, and now the portal will not let me file a fresh one. Can I appeal against that order?
  No. Where the trust itself withdrew the application, no cause of action arises to prefer an appeal against the order that records the withdrawal and rejects the form, and the appeal is not maintainable. The Tribunal dismissed both the s.12AB and the s.80G appeals on that footing and gave no direction about the portal difficulty that had prompted them.

Listed strongest first: Supreme Court, then High Court, then Tribunal, then CBDT. Nothing here has yet been read in full by a chartered accountant — open an entry to see where it came from.