A Pune trust that lets its provisional approval lapse is taxed on its receipts again, and its donors lose the 80G deduction from the day the certificate stops running. Provisional approval has a three year life, and converting it is the filing founders forget. There is nothing dramatic about the fix. Make the state record and the income tax record say the same thing, file Form 10A once, and answer the queries properly when they come.
Which registration has to be closed before Form 10A?
The exemption application cannot lead. Form 10A asks for a registration certificate and a PAN, so the organisation has to exist in law before it can ask to be treated as exempt.
A public trust in Pune registers under the Maharashtra Public Trusts Act 1950. Section 18 makes that registration compulsory, and a trust created after the Act came into force applies within three months of its creation. The application goes to the Deputy or Assistant Charity Commissioner of the region in which the trustee keeps an office or the trust property lies.
The society route is where people come unstuck. A society formed for a charitable purpose is itself a public trust under section 2(13), so a Pune society carries two registrations rather than one, and both live inside the same organisation. Stopping at the 1860 Act certificate leaves the file half built, and the shortfall surfaces the moment an exemption officer asks what the entity is registered as. A section 8 company avoids that particular knot: its registrar is ROC Pune and its incorporation certificate is the document Form 10A refers to.
Which documents does a Pune organisation keep ready?
- The registration certificate, meaning the Charity Commissioner record for a trust or society, or the incorporation certificate sitting on ROC Pune's file for a section 8 company.
- The deed or memorandum, with an objects clause that reads as charitable and leaves no room for benefit flowing back to the trustees.
- PAN of the entity, the bank account donations actually land in, and a plain note on the activities already carried out.
- The trustee list, matching name for name what the Register of Public Trusts currently shows against your entry.
- Proof of ownership of or interest in the trust's immovable property, which Maharashtra now requires with a registration application to head off false property claims.
- Audited accounts for each year the organisation has been running, where there is a history to audit.
The fourth line causes the most trouble. Trustees change, the register does not update itself, and section 22 allows ninety days from the change to report it. We check that report before Form 10A goes in, because a trustee list contradicting the state register is the easiest query an officer will ever raise.
What does 12A and 80G approval cost in Pune?
| Cost head | What it covers | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Professional fee | Form 10A for both approvals, filed and followed through | ₹4,999 |
| Deed and objects review | The clause corrected before anything is submitted | Included |
| Charity Commissioner filings | A section 22 change report where the trustee list has moved | Quoted once we read the file |
| Deed stamping and registration | Maharashtra duty computed and the document registered | Computed before execution |
| Conversion to regular approval | The second application when the provisional years end | Quoted separately |
No stamp duty figure sits in that table, and the omission is deliberate. Which instrument you execute, and the value written into it, is what Maharashtra prices, so the number is computed on your own document and given to you before anybody signs. Charity Commissioner filing fees answer to whatever rules are live on the day. We read them off your file rather than repeat a figure from a page that has aged.
What happens once you hand the file over?
- We read the deed or memorandum against what an exemption officer expects to see, and flag any clause that has to be amended before filing.
- We pull your entry from the Charity Commissioner's portal at charity.maharashtra.gov.in and reconcile the trustee list with it.
- Form 10A is prepared for both approvals together, with the activity note written from what the organisation has actually done.
- We file from your own login and send the acknowledgement across the same day, so the record of what went in stays with you.
- Queries arrive through the portal with a deadline attached. We draft and file the reply, and keep you out of the correspondence.
Which office receives it, and where does a Pune entity sit afterwards?
Nobody travels anywhere to file this. What stays local is the file the Charity Commissioner's organisation keeps on you. That organisation works region wise, and Pune is one of ten Joint Charity Commissioner regions, with Ahilyanagar, Satara and Solapur reporting into it. The Pune office is the Public Trusts Registration Office, and later change reports go there, to the Deputy or Assistant Charity Commissioner rather than to the head of the region.
The deed has a third address again. Document registration runs under IGR Maharashtra, whose head of department sits at Pune, and Pune City registers through the Haveli numbered Joint Sub Registrar offices while Pune Rural has its own separate set. A property at Talegaon or Chakan does not register at a Haveli office, which is worth knowing before anyone books an appointment.
What does a Pune NGO owe in the months after approval?
Approval is a start date, not a finish line, and the state obligations run alongside the income tax ones.
- A change in trustees or in trust property goes to the Charity Commissioner as a change report under section 22, inside ninety days of the change.
- Maharashtra now caps how many trustees a trust can hold for life and sets a five year default term where the deed is silent, in force from 1 September 2025.
- A trust running payroll takes PTRC, deducts ₹200 a month above the slab with ₹300 in February, and files on the periodicity the department publishes.
- PTEC is the separate enrolment certificate under section 5(2), and which Schedule I entry catches your trust decides its rate, so we check rather than assume.
- The Shops Act definition of establishment expressly covers a charitable trust and a society registered under the 1860 Act, and that filing goes online to the state Labour Department's Facilitator.
Maharashtra raised the Shops Act registration threshold to twenty workers with effect from 1 October 2025. Below that an establishment files an intimation instead, and we confirm the position that applies on the day we file for you.
Who is applying for this in Pune right now?
- A wholesale trading family in Camp whose Budhwar Peth counter has funded a grain relief trust for years, and who now need 80G before a corporate donor will sign anything.
- A warehousing operator at Talegaon holding back a donation to a school trust until the 80G certificate is actually on file.
- A society in Kothrud that registered under the 1860 Act, never finished the Charity Commissioner side, and cannot answer the certificate question on the form.
- A trust in Shivajinagar sitting on a provisional certificate expiring next year, with no activity record assembled to convert it.
Why give both approvals to LegalX India in Pune?
We run both halves with one team, the Maharashtra Public Trusts Act filings on the state side and Form 10A on the central side, so the deed, the register and the application stop disagreeing with each other. Our Pune office is at Yashwant Nagar, Near Bharatiya Samajseva, Yerwada, Pune 411006, and the file is handled online with CA and CS support. Trustees who want to hear the sequence in someone's voice before starting can ask for a callback, which comes back inside 30 minutes. More than 10 years of this work sits behind the checklist we send you. If you want the central law set out on its own terms, read the national 12A and 80G registration guide, then bring us the Pune specifics.