Two approvals, two different beneficiaries, and Bengaluru founders routinely weigh one against the other. Approval under section 12AB keeps your organisation's own receipts out of the tax net. Approval under section 80G hands the person writing the cheque a deduction. A trust living on a handful of committed family donors can run on the first alone for a while. A society chasing institutional money cannot, because the finance team on the other side asks for the 80G letter before it asks what you do.
For almost every Bengaluru nonprofit the honest answer is both, prepared together on one Form 10A. What changes from one applicant to the next is not the income tax form at all. It is the state document sitting underneath it.
Which legal form is your NGO in before you touch Form 10A?
Form 10A asks for the instrument that created you, and in this state three different offices produce three different instruments. Settle that first, because a weak objects clause is the commonest reason a file comes back with a query.
- A trust is created by a deed. Where it is settled exclusively for public religious and charitable purposes, Article 54 of the Karnataka Stamp Act charges a fixed duty of ₹2,000, unchanged since 3 February 2024. The same fixed duty applies where property is held without being transferred. The deed is then presented at the jurisdictional sub registrar office through Kaveri Online Services.
- A society is registered under the Karnataka Societies Registration Act, 1960 by the District Registrar of Cooperative Societies, an office that has sat with the Department of Cooperation since 1 June 2016. It needs seven persons above the age of eighteen, and its objects have to come from the list in section 3 of that Act.
- A section 8 company carries no state layer at all. It is incorporated on MCA V3 and sits on the register of ROC Bengaluru, the single registrar for the whole of this state, in the Kendriya Sadana building at Koramangala.
Three kinds of applicant bring this to us in Bengaluru:
- An NGO founder in Malleshwaram who has run an education programme on a society registration for two years, and is now asked for an 80G letter by every institutional funder she approaches.
- A newly settled charitable trust whose deed was drafted before anyone read the permitted objects language, and which needs the deed corrected before the tax file is opened.
- A D2C fashion label in Jayanagar running a giving programme, which will not release money to a partner organisation until the 80G approval order is on record.
What does a Bengaluru applicant have to put on the table?
The document set is national, but two items decide how smoothly a Bengaluru file moves.
The first is the constitution document in its registered form. That means a trust deed carrying the sub registrar's endorsement, a society memorandum and rules with its certificate, or the certificate of incorporation for a section 8 company. Scans that stop short of the endorsement page are the resubmission we see most often.
The second is the registered address. It has to read the same way on the constitution document, on the entity PAN, on the bank record and in the portal profile. Where the premises are rented, the agreement attracts stamp duty, and section 30 of the Karnataka Stamp Act puts that duty on the lessee rather than on the owner of the building. We compute it before the document is executed, not after.
Beyond those two, expect the entity PAN, bank account details and the governing body list with a PAN for each member. Add a written note on activities actually carried out, and audited accounts for every year the organisation has been running.
How the application actually runs, stage by stage
Nothing in the tax approval needs a visit to a counter. The one appearance a Bengaluru client may still make is at a sub registrar slot, and that is for the deed, not for the approval.
- We read the constitution document the way the officer will read it, and flag any objects or dissolution clause that needs amending. You are told plainly whether the deed or the rules have to be corrected before anything is filed.
- We assemble the document set, check the address string across every record, and put the activity note into the shape an Exemptions officer expects to see.
- We prepare and file the application on the income tax e-filing portal from your organisation's own login, and hand you the acknowledgement the same day.
- We answer whatever the officer raises, in writing and inside the window given, and stay on the file until the order is issued.
For the national picture of what each approval does, read our complete 12A and 80G registration guide for India.
What does 12A and 80G registration cost in Bengaluru?
Our fee for the pair of applications starts at ₹4,999. What sits around it depends on which of the three legal forms you hold, and whether that form already exists.
| What you pay for | Who charges it | What sets the amount |
|---|---|---|
| LegalX India professional fee | LegalX India | ₹4,999 onwards, covering both applications |
| Stamp duty on a new trust deed | Department of Stamps and Registration | Article 54 of the state stamp schedule |
| Society registration | Department of Cooperation | Its published fee, higher inside BMRDA limits |
| Section 8 incorporation | ROC Bengaluru, filed on MCA V3 | The MCA fee schedule for the form set |
| Audit and accounts | Your own auditor | Whether the organisation has already been operating |
An organisation already registered pays the first row and usually the last. A founder still choosing a form should budget the state registration cost as part of the same exercise.
Who actually decides your file, and where does it sit?
This is where most pages go vague. Registration under section 12AB and approval under section 80G are national. Forms 10A and 10AB both live on the income tax e-filing portal, and which one your organisation files depends on where it stands in the cycle. We confirm that before submission.
What is local is the officer. The application is decided by the jurisdictional Commissioner of Income Tax (Exemptions), a named charge rather than an anonymous queue, and the Exemptions charge for Bengaluru applicants sits in the city. Neither ROC Bengaluru nor the District Registrar of Cooperative Societies has any say in it.
The office that issued your constitution document does not disappear once the order arrives. It still holds your objects clause and your governing body list, so any amendment made there has to match what the Exemptions officer holds.
What does a Bengaluru NGO owe in its first year?
Approval is not the end of the state layer, and this is the part founders here are least warned about.
Professional tax comes first. The levy runs under Karnataka Act 35 of 1976 and everything is done on e-Prerana at ptax.karnataka.gov.in. An organisation registered under the Karnataka Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017 is caught by one Schedule entry. A company under the Companies Act 2013 engaged in any profession, trade or calling is caught by another. An establishment under the Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1961 employing more than five employees is caught by a third. Where several entries apply, Explanation I says the tax is paid once at ₹2,500 a year, not once per entry, against the enrolment certificate, the EC. An organisation that deducts from staff salaries also takes a registration certificate, the RC, and files monthly.
Two more obligations catch NGOs out. A society or charitable trust carrying on trade or business with ten or more persons falls inside the Karnataka Labour Welfare Fund. The yearly contribution there is ₹50 from the employee and ₹100 from the employer, paid by 15 January. And a society files, within fourteen days of its annual general meeting, the governing body list and an audited balance sheet with its registrar. Section 2(f) closes a society's books on 31 December unless the registrar has sanctioned a different date, which surprises founders who assume the tax year governs everything.
Why bring this to LegalX India in Bengaluru?
We are a CA and CS team working with trusts, societies and section 8 companies across the city, and our own office here is in Kanak Nagar. The filing itself is handled online, so none of this puts you in a queue.
What you get is a firm that reads the state document first. We check the objects and dissolution clauses against the register that issued them, and compute stamp duty before a deed is executed rather than after. Registration under section 12AB then runs on a renewal cycle, and we track those dates so an approval does not lapse quietly.
Bring us the constitution document and the activity note. Within a working day you will know whether the file is ready or the deed has to be fixed first.