Form 10B or Form 10BB?

Three questions decide which audit report a charitable trust, society or Section 8 company must file this year. The rule changed from AY 2023-24 and it is no longer about how you are registered — it is about your income, your foreign contributions and whether you spent anything outside India. Filing the wrong one is treated as filing nothing at all.

1Enter your figures
2Read which form
3Print the working paper

Your trust or institution

Nothing is sent anywhere. Every answer stays in this page.

Assessment year The rule below is uniform from AY 2023-24 onwards

1 of 3 — your income

Total income for the year, before any exemption (₹)

Amount (₹) Your gross income for the year — donations, including corpus donations, plus income from property held under trust — before deducting anything applied to your objects. It is not the surplus after exemption, and it is not receipts less expenditure.

2 of 3 — foreign money

Did you receive any foreign money at all this year?

Foreign contribution received There is no minimum — one rupee is enough.

3 of 3 — money spent abroad

Did you spend any of your income outside India?

Income applied outside India Again no minimum, and no exception for a one-off payment.

Name it for your file

Trust / institution name Optional. Shown on the verdict and at the top of the printed working paper. Not stored anywhere.

Amounts for the working paper

Nothing to record here — you answered No to both questions above. Amounts are optional in any case; the answer does not change with them.

How the entity is registered

How is the entity registered? Recorded for your file — it does not decide the form any more

What you filed last year

Last year's audit report Only so the tool can warn you when the answer has changed. Last year's form is not evidence of this year's — the department says so in terms.

The rule, in full

Substituted with effect from 1 April 2023 by the Income-tax (Third Amendment) Rules, 2023, which rewrote Rule 16CC and Rule 17B. Form 10BB was re-notified by Notification No. 7/2023 dated 21 February 2023.

Form	When it applies
Form 10B	If any one of the three triggers fires: total income (before ss.11/12 and s.10(23C)(iv)/(v)/(vi)/(via)) exceeds ₹5 crore; or any foreign contribution was received; or any part of the income was applied outside India.On the income figure: in practice this is your gross income for the year — voluntary contributions (including corpus donations, because s.11(1)(d) is itself part of s.11) plus income from property held under trust — before deducting anything applied to objects or accumulated. It is not the surplus after exemption, and it is not receipts less expenditure.
Form 10BB	In every other case — that is, only where all three are false.

Form

When it applies

Form 10B

If any one of the three triggers fires: total income (before ss.11/12 and s.10(23C)(iv)/(v)/(vi)/(via)) exceeds ₹5 crore; or any foreign contribution was received; or any part of the income was applied outside India.On the income figure: in practice this is your gross income for the year — voluntary contributions (including corpus donations, because s.11(1)(d) is itself part of s.11) plus income from property held under trust — before deducting anything applied to objects or accumulated. It is not the surplus after exemption, and it is not receipts less expenditure.

Form 10BB

In every other case — that is, only where all three are false.

The registration route stopped mattering in 2023. Until AY 2022-23 the split was by registration — Form 10B for section 12AB trusts, Form 10BB for section 10(23C) institutions. That is the rule most published guidance still describes, including articles written in 2026, and for a small section 10(23C) school it is now exactly backwards. Both forms are common to both registration routes and the split is by the three triggers above.

The second and third conditions have no de minimis. There is no threshold, no proportionality and no exception for a one-off. A single foreign donation of ₹5,000 puts a ₹40 lakh trust into Form 10B. That is the trap the "we are small, so 10BB" instinct gets wrong every time.

Where each condition comes from: the first, second and third conditions of Rule 16CC and Rule 17B. The income figure is computed without giving effect to sections 11 and 12 or to section 10(23C)(iv)/(v)/(vi)/(via), and corpus donations count because s.11(1)(d) is itself part of s.11.

Sources

Income Tax Department — Form 10B (A.Y. 2023-24 onwards) and Form 10BB (A.Y. 2023-24 onwards)
Department FAQs on Form 10BB — including the instruction that applicability from AY 2023-24 is decided on amended Rule 16CC and Rule 17B irrespective of the form filed in earlier years
CBDT amends the trust audit report format and Rules 16CC and 17B — Income-tax (Third Amendment) Rules, 2023
Centre for Advancement of Philanthropy — Audit report in Form 10B or 10BB?
PIB — CBDT Circular No. 2/2024 dated 5 March 2024, issued because trusts filed the wrong form at scale for AY 2023-24 and given a window to re-file
CBDT Circular 16/2024 dated 18 November 2024 — condonation of delay in filing Forms 9A, 10, 10B and 10BB, within three years from the end of the assessment year, on a reasonable-cause test. This, not Circular 2/2024, is the route open today for a prior year filed on the wrong form; Circular 2/2024's re-filing window closed on 31 March 2024
CBDT Circular 17/2024, same date — the equivalent route for s.10(23C) cases
Form 10B — applicability and due dates
Income Tax Department — Form 112 FAQs — the department's own statement of the small registered NPO test (₹5 crore regular income u/s 335, ₹10 lakh foreign contribution, ₹10 lakh applied outside India)
Form No. 112 (PDF, header "[See rule 188]") — hosted by the department
Form 112 — the successor NPO audit report under section 348 and Rule 188

Related tools for trusts and NGOs

Form 10AB / RNPO clause picker
Form 10BD / Form 113 donation statement builder — coming February 2027