Section 80G(5)

Section 80G(5) — the law in short

What the courts have decided on section 80G(5), in one screen. Read this first; open an entry when you need the facts, the reasoning and the source.

• Upper Ganges Sugar Mills Ltd v CIT Supreme CourtHelps departmentNo later treatment found
  I donated to a trust that runs schools and hospitals but also has an object of maintaining places of worship. Do I still get the section 80G deduction?
  No. The Supreme Court held that Explanation 3 to section 80G does not ask whether the institution as a whole is substantially religious. It asks whether any one of its objects is wholly, or substantially wholly, of a religious nature. If one is, the institution falls outside section 80G and a donation to it earns no deduction, however charitable the rest of its objects are. The dominant purpose reasoning of Surat Art Silk, which was about the words in section 2(15), gives no help in construing Explanation 3.
• CIT (Exemptions), Kolkata v West Bengal Welfare Society High CourtHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  My Form 10AB was rejected before April 2024 because it was late or filed under the wrong section code. Is that rejection the end of the matter?
  No. The Calcutta High Court, dismissing the Revenue's appeal, recorded that clause 4.1 of CBDT Circular No. 7 of 2024 dated 25 April 2024 allows a trust whose Form 10AB was rejected on or before the issue of that circular solely because it was furnished after the due date or under the wrong section code to furnish a fresh Form 10AB within the extended time in paragraph 3(ii), namely 30 June 2024. The Court also approved the Tribunal's construction that a trust becomes eligible to apply for final registration only after the grant of provisional approval, so the clause (iii) time limit must be read in that light.
• Shri Anandpur Satsang Trust v CIT (Exemptions), Chandigarh High CourtHelps taxpayer
  My Form 10AB under s.80G(5) was one day late and the Commissioner rejected it, saying he has no power to condone. Is a delay of one day really fatal?
  No. The Punjab and Haryana High Court set aside the rejection and remanded the matter for a fresh order to be passed without taking the delay into account, holding that a delay of one day in filing Form 10AB cannot in itself be made a ground to reject the application. The Court did not decide the Commissioner's contention that he has no power to condone delay at all — it held only that this delay could not justify the rejection.
• 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.
• Care and Share Charitable Trust v CIT (Exemptions), Chennai ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  My Form 10AB for final approval under s.80G was rejected for a delay of two days and the CIT(E) says he has no power to condone it for 80G. Is that right, and is there a way round?
  The CIT(E) is right that s.80G carries no condonation power — the proviso inserted in 2024 permitting condonation sits in s.12A(1)(ac) and governs registration, not 80G approval. The way round is clause (iv)(B) of the first proviso to s.80G(5) — a clause that is older than the 2024 amendment and was not inserted by it, but which the Finance (No. 2) Act 2024 opened up with effect from 1 October 2024 by omitting the words that had confined item (B) to an institution no part of whose income had been excluded under sub-clause (iv), (v), (vi) or (via) of s.10(23C) or under s.11 or s.12 for any previous year ending on or before the date of application — so that an institution whose activities have commenced may now apply at any time after commencement; the Tribunal directed the CIT(E) to treat the out-of-time clause (iii) application as one made under clause (iv)(B) and to decide it on the merits.
• 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.
• Grow Foundation v CIT (Exemption) ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  My trust's application in Form 10AB for final approval under s.80G(5) was rejected as time-barred. Do the CBDT circulars extending the date save it?
  Yes, on this decision. The Tribunal held that the application could not be rejected merely because it was not filed by 30 September 2023, that date having been arrived at through CBDT Circular No.6/2023 and then further extended to 30 June 2024 by CBDT Circular No.7/2024. The rejection was set aside and the matter restored to the CIT (Exemption) for de novo consideration on merits.
• JMS Mining Pvt Ltd v PCIT-2, Kolkata ITATHelps taxpayer
  I added back my company's CSR spend under Explanation 2 to s.37(1) and then claimed 50 per cent of it under s.80G. The Commissioner says s.37 blocks that and has revised the assessment under s.263. Is he right?
  No. Explanation 2 to s.37(1) operates only while computing business income under Chapter IV-D; it says nothing about Chapter VI-A, so a CSR contribution that independently satisfies s.80G remains deductible under s.80G. Parliament carved out only two CSR items in s.80G itself — clauses (iiihk) and (iiihl), the Swachh Bharat Kosh and the Clean Ganga Fund — and by expressio unius that exclusion implies every other qualifying donation survives.
• Statutory position — s.12AB registration periods, the Finance Act 2025 ten-year proviso for small trusts, and the Finance (No. 2) Act 2024 power to condone a late application CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both ways
  How long does registration under s.12AB now run, is the ten-year period for small trusts real, and is there still any way to save a late Form 10A or Form 10AB?
  Registration under s.12AB(1)(a) and under s.12AB(1)(b)(ii)(A) runs five years; provisional registration under s.12AB(1)(c) runs three years from the assessment year for which registration is sought. The ten-year period is real but narrower than it is usually described: a proviso to s.12AB(1) inserted by the Finance Act 2025 (Act No. 7 of 2025) with effect from 1 April 2025 substitutes ten years for five where the application is under sub-clauses (i) to (v) of s.12A(1)(ac) and the total income of the trust, without giving effect to ss.11 and 12, did not exceed rupees five crores in each of the two previous years preceding the previous year in which the application is made — it does not lengthen the three-year provisional registration under clause (c). Separately, a proviso to s.12A(1)(ac) inserted by Act No. 15 of 2024 with effect from 1 October 2024 empowers the Principal Commissioner or Commissioner to condone a delay in filing where he considers there is a reasonable cause, and the application is then deemed to have been filed within time.

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.