THE NEW REGIME FROM APRIL 1^st 2021

The Finance Act 2020 and 2021 has brought in some dynamic changes in respect of the exempted Trusts, Societies, NGOs, Charitable Trusts, Section 8 Companies including educational, medical and/or religious institutions complying with the certain rules of registration under the Income Tax Act, 1961 (the Act). The registrations were perpetuity in nature, and their registrations could be invoked in the only certain scenario. The registrations under the former legislation were a cumbersome process without any time limit. The registration under section 12AA of the Act will be redundant from 1^st April 2021 and the new section 12 AB has replaced the old section 12 A for registration purposes. This new incorporated section 12AB of the Act will have a new regime of the registration process by prescribing the time frame for processing the application and a limited validity of such exemption for five years only. The objective to digitize the process of registration with a fixed timeline is to curb the malpractices that have been noticed in the functioning of some of such institutions in the judicial and official scrutiny of the granted lifelong exemptions. The intention of the legislature is clear to provide the tax benefit only to those which carry on genuine charitable activities. Even the existing charitable institutions are required to apply for fresh registration under the new provisions of Sec 12AB of Income Tax Act.

CAG Audit Report 20 of 2013

The Ministry may consider providing suitable data base of registered trusts/institutions to AOs to have co-ordination between Approving Authorities and AOs.

The Finance Minister in her Budget Speech while presenting the Union Budget 2020 on 01.02.2020 has announced the following measures undertaken under the Income Tax Act for the Charitable Institutions-

“Acknowledging the important role played by the charitable institutions in the society, the income of these institutions is fully exempt from taxation. Further, donation made to these institutions is also allowed as deduction in computing the taxable income of the donor. Currently, a taxpayer is required to fill the complete details of the donee in the income tax return for availing deduction.

In order to ease the process of claiming deduction for donation, it is proposed to pre-fill the donee’s information in taxpayer’s return on the basis of information of donations furnished by the donee. This would result in hassle-free claim of deduction for the donation made by the taxpayer.

Further, in order to claim the tax exemption, the charity institutions have to be registered with the Income Tax Department. In the past, the process of the registration was completely manual and scattered all over the country.

In order to simplify the compliance for the new and existing charity institutions, I propose to make the process of registration completely electronic under which a unique registration number (URN) shall be issued to all new and existing charity institutions. Further, to facilitate the registration of the new charity institution which is yet to start their charitable activities, I propose to allow them provisional registration for three years.”

Explanatory Memorandum

Rationalising the process of registration of trusts, institutions, funds, university, hospital etc and approval in the case of association, university, college, institution or company etc.

The present process of registration of trusts, institutions, funds, university, hospital etc u/s12AA or under sub-clauses (iv), (v), (vi) or (via) of clause (23C)of s.10, and approval of association ,university, college, institution or company etc need improvement with advent of technology and keeping in mind the practical issue of difficulty in obtaining registration /approval /notification before actually starting the activities.

It is also felt that the approval /registration /notification for exemption should also be for a limited period, say for a period not exceeding 5 years at one time, which would act as check to ensure that the conditions of approval /registration /notification are adhered to for want of continuance of exemption. This would in fact also be a reason for having a non-adversarial regime and not conducting roving inquiry in the affairs of the exempt entities on day to day basis, in general, as in any case they would be revisiting the concerned authorities for new registration before expiry of the period of exemption.

This new process needs to be provided for both existing and new exempt entities.

The new registration procedure prescribed under section 12AB was supposed to be rolled out from 01.06.2020 and end by 31^st August 2020, which was deferred and extended to 01.10.2020 and end by 31^st December 2020 but considering the pandemic situation, it has been extended to 01.04.2021 and hence now all existing trust have to re-register themselves under section 12AB from 01.04.2021. Both the renewal of registration u/s 12A or section 12AA, as well as renewal of approval under section 80G, is being deferred. The legislative amendments were introduced by the Taxation and Other Laws (Relaxation and Amendment of Certain Provisions) Act, 2020 which has further extended the new registration and other procedure under section 12AB and other sections to 01.04.2021. These amendments were carried out in all the related provisions which were introduced by the Finance Act, 2020. Hence, the new provisions related to charitable trusts and other institutions shall now apply from the financial year 2021-22.

For this purpose, the Taxation and Other Laws (Relaxation and Amendment of Certain Provisions) Act, 2020 has to amend the related provisions in a two-way manner. Firstly, the amendments in this Act have withdrawn all the amendments made by the Finance Act, 2020 in the Income Tax Act, 1961. Since the provisions of Finance Act, 2020 was notified on March 22, 2020, it becomes necessary to roll back the amendments so far introduced in the Income Tax Act. This has brought all the relevant provisions to the pre-amended position. Secondly, the Taxation and Other Laws (Relaxation and Amendment of Certain Provisions) Act, 2020 has amended the Income Tax Act to introduce all these amendments from April 1, 2021.

The Government notified the Taxation and Other Laws (Relaxation and Amendment of Certain Provisions) Act, 2020 on 29 September 2020 after receiving the President of India’s assent. The Act seeks to enact legislative amendments in direct and indirect tax laws which were introduced by the Taxation and Other Laws (Relaxation of Certain Provisions) Ordinance, 2020 as a COVID-19 pandemic relief measure. It also legislates subsequent relaxations provided vide the Ordinance and Notification/Press Releases.