Missed Form 10BD? Section 234G Penalty & Form 10BE Fix

Last reviewed: 23 September 2026. The due date for filing Form 10BD and issuing Form 10BE for donations received in FY 2025-26 was 31 May 2026. If your trust, Section 8 company or approved institution hasn't filed it yet, the clock hasn't stopped — it's simply running against you every single day, and your donors are the ones who feel it first. This guide covers exactly what Section 234G and Section 271K cost, how to file a belated or revised Form 10BD, and what a delayed Form 10BE does to a donor's Section 80G claim.

Who has to file, and by when

Any fund, trust, institution, university or Section 8 company approved under Section 80G(5), or a research association or university approved under Section 35(1A), that received donations during a financial year must file Form 10BD — a donor-wise statement of donations — and issue Form 10BE, the certificate that flows through to each donor's own return. Both cash and non-cash donations are covered, and corpus donations must be reported separately from non-corpus. For donations received in FY 2025-26, the due date for both the statement and the certificate was 31 May 2026. If your trust is still catching up, that date has already passed — the filing is now late, not upcoming.

The Section 234G late fee — how it actually accrues

Section 234G charges a late fee of Rs 200 for every day of default, counted from the day after the due date until the statement is actually filed. The one relief built into the section: the total late fee cannot exceed the amount of the donation in respect of which the default has occurred, read donation-by-donor rather than as one blanket cap on the whole statement. In practice, for a trust with a reasonably sized annual donation book, this cap rarely bites — Rs 200 a day crosses most individual donation amounts within a matter of weeks, well before the cap becomes relevant.

Section 271K — the separate, discretionary penalty

Section 271K is independent of the late fee under 234G and can be levied by the Assessing Officer for failure to furnish Form 10BD or Form 10BE within the prescribed time, or for furnishing incorrect information in either. The penalty range is Rs 10,000 to Rs 1,00,000. Unlike the 234G late fee, which accrues automatically by formula, Section 271K is discretionary — it requires an AO to actually initiate and levy it, and a trust that files late but voluntarily, before any notice, is generally in a better position to explain the delay than one that files only after being flagged.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a straightforward late filing. A Thane-based educational trust received Rs 18 lakh in donations during FY 2025-26 across 42 donors. It realises the omission on 23 September 2026 — 115 days after the 31 May due date — and files that day. Late fee under Section 234G: 115 days x Rs 200 = Rs 23,000, well under the per-donor donation cap, so the full Rs 23,000 is payable. Section 271K exposure remains at the AO's discretion but a same-day voluntary filing on discovery is the strongest position available at that point.

Example 2 — a small donation, the cap actually matters. A trust omitted a single donor's Rs 8,000 contribution from an otherwise-timely Form 10BD and corrects it via a revised filing 60 days later. Uncapped, 60 days x Rs 200 = Rs 12,000 — but the late fee for that donation cannot exceed Rs 8,000, so Rs 8,000 is the fee actually payable for that entry, not Rs 12,000.

Filing now — belated and revised Form 10BD

The income-tax portal does not block a Form 10BD filing after the due date; a belated statement can be filed at any time, with the late fee and penalty exposure described above. If a Form 10BD was already filed on time but had errors — wrong PAN, wrong donation amount, or donors left out — the fix is a Revised Form 10BD: log in, select the revised filing type, download the existing donor data, correct or add entries, mark corrected rows as revised and omitted rows as deleted, and re-upload with supporting documentation. Add a donor only where the donation was genuinely received during that year and can be evidenced with receipts or bank records — adding entries purely to extend a donor's deduction window is not permitted and invites scrutiny on verification.

What a delayed Form 10BE does to your donor's Section 80G claim

Since AY 2022-23, a donor's Section 80G deduction is validated against the trust's own Form 10BD filing — the donation has to be reported donor-wise before the corresponding Form 10BE certificate is generated, and that data is what prefills in the donor's own return. If your trust hasn't filed Form 10BD, no valid Form 10BE exists for that donor, and their claimed deduction can be denied or flagged for mismatch — even where the donation itself is completely genuine and documented on the donor's side. This is very often how a trust first learns about its own missed filing: not a departmental notice, but an anxious donor asking why their 80G claim didn't go through. Reconcile your books' total donations received against what's actually been reported in Form 10BD before every ITR filing season, not just at year-end.

How this maps under the Income-tax Act, 2025

The underlying reporting obligation continues under Section 354 of the Income-tax Act, 2025, applicable from FY 2026-27. Form 10BD and Form 10BE are expected to be renumbered as Forms 113 and 114 in the new form series — the substance of who reports, the donor-wise granularity, and the link to the donor's own 80G claim carries forward unchanged. For FY 2025-26 filings (the ones due 31 May 2026, discussed throughout this article), continue citing the 1961 Act sections; from FY 2026-27 onward, confirm the current portal labelling before quoting a form or section number, since renumbering rollouts on the e-filing portal have historically lagged the statute.

Common mistakes we see

• Treating Form 10BD as optional below a donation threshold. There is no minimum donation size below which reporting is exempt — every donation eligible for 80G has to be reported, however small.
• Reporting corpus and non-corpus donations under one head. The form requires them separately; getting this wrong is a common reason a return gets flagged for correction even when the total figure is accurate.
• Waiting for a donor complaint before checking. By the time a donor calls about a rejected 80G claim, the late fee has usually been running for months. Reconcile Form 10BD against your donation register proactively, ideally each quarter.
• Assuming last year's approval covers this year automatically. Confirm your Section 80G(5)/12AB approval is still current before the filing season — a lapsed or under-renewal approval changes the reporting position entirely.

For the registration and renewal side of this — getting and keeping the 80G(5) and 12AB approvals that make Form 10BD relevant in the first place — see our 12A and 80G registration guide. If your trust also crosses the audit-report threshold, our Form 10B vs Form 10BB guide covers that separate 30 September deadline. Both sit inside our NGO Compliance Hub, which indexes every stage of a trust's annual compliance calendar.

Frequently asked questions