GST on Donations collected from Customers

[ROHIT GOEL]

Dear Sirs,

One of our client(a company) runs a television broadcasting channel. Due to the COVID-19 Crisis, the company has started a campaign on their channel where they are requesting the audience to send money to the company's bank account and then post accumulation of say ₹ 50 lakhs, the company would donate entire amount to a Trust registered u/s 12AA/80G of Income Tax Act. No part of the money would be retained by the company at all.

The company is not registered u/s 80G/12AA, so my query is whether the amounts collected by the company from their customers/audience be treated as supply and liable to GST or would it be simply treated as a transaction in money and as such held to be non taxable?

Kindly advice with supporting judicial decisions/analysis of legal provisions.

AI Summary

GST applicability on donations: voluntary collections remitted as donations are not consideration and thus not taxable.
Collections made by the broadcaster as voluntary donations, fully remitted to a charitable trust and not retained, are not consideration for any supply and therefore fall outside the definitions of service, supply and business for GST purposes; the broadcaster acts as a custodian/conduit and such transactions are treated as transactions in money and are not taxable under GST.