Corpus donations are not trust income for fee levy when the receipt is specifically directed to form corpus.

A donation made with a specific direction that it form part of a religious trust's corpus is not income for levy of fee under section 70(1) of the Bihar Hindu Religious Trusts Act, 1950, because the charging provision applies to net income and not to the trust fund itself. Such a corpus-directed receipt is earmarked for a specific purpose and is outside ordinary income available for application. The same distinction is reflected in income-tax treatment of voluntary corpus contributions. Where doubt exists in a fiscal charging provision, construction must favour the assessee. On that basis, the corpus donation was not chargeable to fee and the levy was unsustainable.

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Issues: Whether a donation made with a specific direction that it form part of the corpus of a religious trust is assessable as income for the purpose of levy of fee under section 70(1) of the Bihar Hindu Religious Trusts Act, 1950.

Analysis: The fee under section 70(1) is a charging levy imposed on the net income of a religious trust, not on the trust fund as such. A sum received with a specific direction that it shall form part of the corpus is earmarked for a particular purpose and cannot be treated as an ordinary receipt available for application as income. The definition of income under the Income-tax Act also excludes voluntary contributions made with a specific corpus direction, and section 12 of the Income-tax Act, 1961 similarly carves out such corpus donations from deemed income. In a fiscal statute, where the charging provision is in doubt, the construction must favour the assessee.

Conclusion: The donation formed part of the corpus and was not income chargeable to fee under section 70(1); the levy was therefore unsustainable and the writ petition failed.

Ratio Decidendi: A donation made with a specific direction to constitute corpus of a trust is not income for the purpose of a charging provision that levies fee only on net income, and fiscal ambiguity must be resolved in favour of the assessee.

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