The Small Charitable Donations Bill
- Download the report on responses to the Public Reading Stage (PDF, 401kb)
- Memorandum submitted by HM Treasury and HM Revenue and Customs
The Small Charitable Donations Bill will introduce the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme (GASDS) – a new scheme that will enable charities and community amateur sports clubs (CASCs) to claim Gift Aid style payments on the small donations they receive where it is difficult to get a Gift Aid declaration.
Charities and CASCs will be able to claim a top up payment on small donations of up to £20, up to a total of £5,000 of small donations per year, so qualifying charities and CASCs will be able to claim up to £1,250 in payments each year. It is estimated that this scheme, announced at Budget 2011, will lead to an extra £100 million a year in Government funding for charities by 2015-16. The scheme will commence in April 2013.
Policy Team, Institute of Fundraising: The concepts around community buildings and connected organisations are overly complex and may dissuade charities from participating in the scheme as some are already put off by the complexity of standard Gift Aid.
The community buildings concepts appear to have been designed to meet the needs of specific charities (mainly those known as excepted charities, such as churches and Scout groups, and those with unusual structures) and these exceptions could be managed in simpler ways. In trying to create "fairness" in some areas it has not just created complexity but it has also created unfairness between different charitable causes.
The clauses are ambiguous and it is possible that branches or offices of some large charities could be classed as community buildings and therefore eligible for additional top-ups which may not be in the intended spirit of the policy.
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