Chartered Accountant · ICAI M.No. 153926 · FRN 136869W
Checklist
- Trust deed / instrument
- Registration certificate
- Trust PAN, trustee details
Activity and finance details
A note on objects and activities, and recent accounts, support the application.
Assembling a clean application
Beyond the core list, a few details decide whether the application goes through cleanly. The trust deed (or the instrument creating the trust or society) must clearly set out charitable objects and the rules for the trustees, and its registration with the sub-registrar or, in states like Maharashtra, the Charity Commissioner should be in place. The trust needs its own PAN, and the trustees’ identity and contact details. Where the trust is already operating, recent audited financial statements and a note describing the actual activities — what it does, whom it serves, how income is applied — carry weight, since the department is checking genuineness, not just paperwork. If the trust holds or is applying for 80G, those details are linked in. Any existing or past registration (12A/12AA being migrated, or a provisional registration moving to regular) must be referenced. The application is filed online in Form 10A or 10AB, so scanned copies need to be legible and consistent with each other — a mismatch between the deed, the PAN and the activity note is a common cause of a query. Getting the deed’s objects and the activity write-up aligned before filing is what makes the process smooth. Confirm the current document list, which the forms specify.