Forms 113 and 114: the donation statement, and why the donor's claim depends on it
One statement, filed by the trust by 31 May, decides whether a whole year of donors can claim. The certificate each of them needs is generated only when that statement is filed, and not a day before.
A donor gives ₹50,000 to a trust in October, keeps the receipt, and claims the deduction the following July. The claim is disallowed. Nothing was wrong with the gift or the paper receipt. The trust had not filed its statement of donations, so the certificate the donor needed was never generated, and the department had nothing to match the claim against. Under the Income-tax Act, 2025, the donor's deduction rests on the trust's filing, and the two forms that carry it are Form No. 113 and Form No. 114.
In short
- The trust files Form No. 113, the statement of donations, under section 354(1), by 31 May following the tax year. It replaces Form 10BD. Filing it generates Form No. 114, the donor's certificate under section 354(1)(g), within about a day. The donor claims under section 133(1)(b)(ii).
- The donor's deduction is not independent. The department matches the claim to Form 113. No filing, or a wrong PAN or amount, and the deduction is disallowed, whatever the receipt says.
- Default by the trust costs a fee of ₹200 a day under section 429, capped at the donation, and a penalty of ₹10,000 to ₹1,00,000 under section 464.
- Not every receipt counts. Anonymous gifts, cash over ₹2,000 and donations in kind earn no deduction, and a donor's PAN is what makes any certificate possible.
If you still think in the old numbers
Mapping| Under the 1961 Act | Under the 2025 Act |
|---|---|
| Statement of donations: Form 10BD | Form No. 113 |
| Certificate of donation: Form 10BE | Form No. 114 |
| Reporting obligation: section 80G(5)(viii), (ix) | Section 354(1) |
| The donor's deduction: section 80G | Section 133(1)(b)(ii) |
| Rule 18AB of the 1962 Rules | Rules 190(2) and 190(7) of the 2026 Rules |
| Late fee 234G, penalty 271K | Section 429 fee, section 464 penalty |
What Forms 113 and 114 are
Form No. 113 is the annual statement in which a registered non-profit organisation reports, donor by donor, the donations it received in the tax year. It is filed under section 354(1), electronically, by 31 May following the year. Form No. 114 is the certificate of donation that the portal generates from that statement, one for each donor, under section 354(1)(g). The donor uses it to claim the deduction under section 133(1)(b)(ii).
The trust files one. The donor receives the other. The donor never files Form 114, and the trust no longer types it out by hand. It is drawn from the portal within about a day of the statement going in, and passed on to the donor.
The chain, from donation to deduction
Every deduction a donor claims is the last link in a chain that started months earlier, at the trust's desk. If a single link is missing, the deduction fails, and the donor is usually the last to find out.
When and how the trust files
Form 113 is filed once a year, electronically, by 31 May following the tax year in which the donations were received. It cannot be filed on paper, and it needs the trust's PAN. Each donation is reported with the donor's name, address, PAN or other identification, the amount, the type of donation and the mode of receipt.
The portal lets a trust build the statement through the year using a Pre-Acknowledgement Number, but that number can only be generated while the tax year is still running. Once 31 March has passed, no Pre-ARN can be raised for the closed year, and the whole statement must be assembled and filed in one pass.
A mistake in a filed statement is put right by a correction statement in Form 113, after which a corrected Form 114 is reissued to the affected donor. The route exists. But a donor who has already filed a return on the strength of a wrong certificate now has a second problem to fix, on their own return, so the correction is best made before certificates go out, not after.
The Pre-Acknowledgement Number can be raised only while the tax year is still open. A trust that means to file in May, after the year has closed on 31 March, will find it cannot create a Pre-ARN for that year and must file the full statement in a single sitting. For a body with a few hundred donors, that is the difference between a task spread across the year and a scramble in May.
What the donor needs, and why claims fail
A donor needs one thing, Form No. 114, and cannot produce it. It comes only after the trust files Form 113. The deduction under section 133(1)(b)(ii) is then checked against the trust's statement, and where the two do not meet, the claim goes.
Claims fail in a handful of predictable ways. The trust did not file at all, so no certificate exists. The trust filed, but against a wrong or mistyped PAN, so the donation sits in someone else's certificate, or in none. The amounts do not agree, because the figure reported differs from the figure given. Or the donor filed the return before the trust filed its statement, so the pre-filled data was empty at the moment of the claim.
The safe order is the trust first, the donor after. Form 114 appears about a day after Form 113 is filed, and the donation then flows into the donor's annual information statement. A donor who files in April, ahead of the trust's May deadline, is claiming against data that has not arrived yet.
A school trust receives 812 donations across the year. It files Form 113 on 20 May, and the 812 certificates in Form 114 are generated on 21 May. A donor who files a return on 25 May finds the donation already pre-filled, and the deduction passes on processing. A donor who filed on 2 May, ahead of the trust, claimed against an empty field and receives a query. Same trust, same donation, only the order of filing changed.
Corporate donors feel this first, because their own auditors reconcile the deduction to the certificate. For them, a missing Form 114 surfaces as a query in the audit long before it would ever surface as a notice from the department.
What is reportable, and what is not
Not every rupee a trust receives goes into Form 113, and not every gift earns the donor a deduction. The two questions are separate, and both matter.
- Corpus and non-corpus donations are both reported, but flagged for what they are.
- Anonymous donations, where the donor's identity is not on record, cannot be certified. Depending on the nature of the institution, they can also be taxed as anonymous income under section 337, so they are a cost rather than a benefit.
- A cash donation above ₹2,000 earns the donor no deduction, so certifying it certifies nothing claimable. Donations meant to be useful to the donor should move through a bank channel.
- Donations in kind, goods rather than money, are outside the deduction altogether.
- Grants from one registered trust to another, and foreign contributions under FCRA, carry their own treatment and should not be swept into the donor-reporting stream without thought.
The reconciliation that matters is the trust's own books against the donor-wise total in Form 113. Anything received but not reportable, and anything reportable but not deductible, is better identified before the statement is filed than after a donor asks why the figures do not agree.
What default costs
The cost of missing 31 May is greater than most trustees expect, and most of it is not the fee. A late statement carries a charge and a penalty, and while it sits unfiled it strands every donor of the year.
The fee under section 429 is ₹200 for each day of delay, running until the statement is filed and capped at the amount of the donation in respect of which the default occurred. It has to be paid before the statement can be furnished. On top of the fee, section 464 allows a penalty of ₹10,000 to ₹1,00,000 for failure to furnish the statement. These are the 2025 Act's versions of the old sections 234G and 271K.
The larger cost is not the fee. It is that until the statement is filed, not one donor of that year can claim, and the goodwill of the donors who trusted the trust takes the damage. The date belongs on the compliance calendar next to the return.
31 May, following the tax year. A trust that received donations in the year ending 31 March 2027 files Form 113 by 31 May 2027, and the Form 114 certificates follow within a day. Miss it, and the fee runs at ₹200 a day while every donor of the year waits for a certificate that has not been generated.
Where it goes wrong in practice
The failures split cleanly between the trust's side and the donor's side, and most of them come down to sequence.
On the trust's side, one body collects small online donations through a platform where donors give no PAN, and then cannot certify a single one of them. Another reports against PANs copied from receipts without checking, and a run of certificates lands on the wrong people. A third waits until June, discovers the Pre-ARN cannot be raised for the closed year, files in a hurry, and spends the following weeks issuing correction statements.
On the donor's side, one donor files the return in April, before the trust has filed in May, and the claim is disallowed for want of matching data. Another gives ₹5,000 in cash, holds a proper receipt, and cannot see why the deduction is refused, the ₹2,000 cash ceiling having quietly removed it. A third changes PAN or address after donating and never tells the trust, so the certificate carries stale particulars.
The through-line is that donor reporting is a shared act. The trust cannot certify what the donor did not identify, and the donor cannot claim what the trust did not report. And none of it works at all unless the trust's approval under section 354 is live, which is why donor reporting sits alongside registration renewal, not apart from it.
Six cards on donor reporting
Tap a card to turn itTest the position
Questions we are asked
We run a small trust and received donations this year. Do we have to file anything?
Yes, if you want your donors to be able to claim. File Form No. 113, the statement of donations, under section 354(1), by 31 May following the tax year. Once it is filed, Form No. 114 certificates are generated for your donors within about a day. Without the statement, your donors cannot claim, whatever receipts you gave them.
A donor is asking for their 80G certificate. What do we send?
You send Form No. 114, the certificate of donation. You do not prepare it by hand. It is generated from your Form 113 filing and downloaded from the e-filing portal, then passed to the donor. If you have not yet filed Form 113, there is no certificate to send, and filing it is the first step.
One donor gave us a wrong PAN. What now?
File a correction statement in Form 113 with the right particulars, and a corrected Form 114 will be reissued. Do it promptly, because a donor who has already filed a return on a wrong certificate then has to correct their own return as well. Checking PANs before filing avoids the whole chain.
Can donors claim during our provisional registration?
Yes. Provisional approval under section 354 lets donors claim under section 133(1)(b)(ii), and you must file Form 113 for donations received in the provisional period just as in the regular period. Donor reporting does not wait for regular registration.
Our 80G approval is up for renewal. Does that affect donor reporting?
It does. A donor can only claim if the trust's approval under section 354 is valid when the donation is made and reported. If the approval has lapsed, or a provisional approval was never converted to regular, the certificate you issue is not good. Renewal and donor reporting have to be managed together.
We received some anonymous cash-box collections. Do we report them?
No, and there is a further point. Donations where the donor's identity is not on record cannot be certified, and depending on the nature of the institution they can be taxed as anonymous income under section 337. They are a cost rather than a benefit, and they do not belong in the donor-wise statement.
A donor gave us furniture for our school. Does the donor get a deduction?
No. Donations in kind, goods rather than money, are outside the deduction, so there is nothing to certify in Form 114 for them. The gift can be recorded in the accounts and the donor thanked, but it does not go into the donor-reporting stream as a deductible donation.
Form 113 is no longer a routine annual filing. It is the link that lets every donor claim the benefit they were promised, so accurate reporting on time protects the donor, preserves the trust's standing, and keeps a genuine gift from turning into a disallowed claim.
Before filing Form 113, reconcile:
- the donation total in the books against the donor-wise total in the statement
- each donor's PAN against the receipt, and against the PAN database where it can be checked
- the mode of receipt, setting cash over ₹2,000 and donations in kind aside as non-deductible
- corpus and non-corpus donations, each classified correctly
- amounts received but not reportable, such as anonymous collections and grants from other trusts
- the validity of the section 354 approval across the period of the donations
Sources relied on
- Income Tax Department, Form No. 113 and Form No. 114 Frequently Asked Questions, incometaxindia.gov.in/documents/d/guest/form-113-114-faqs
- Income Tax Department, Form 113-114 User Manual, e-Filing portal, incometax.gov.in
- Income Tax Department, Form No. 113 and Form No. 114 as notified, incometaxindia.gov.in/documents/d/guest/fn-113
- Income Tax Department, Form Mapping Guide, Income-tax Act, 1961 to 2025 (10BD to 113, 10BE to 114), incometax.gov.in
- Income-tax Act, 2025, sections 354(1) and 354(1)(g), 133(1)(b)(ii), 337, 429 (fee for default relating to statement or certificate) and 464 (penalty for failure to furnish statements), incometaxindia.gov.in
This note sets out the general position in law as at 26 July 2026 and is written for information only. It is not advice on any particular matter, and it should not be acted on without professional advice on the specific facts. Provisions, forms and time limits change, and the position for your own institution or your own claim may differ.
