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.
NCVO Policy team, NCVO: NCVO understands that HMRC wish to reduce fraud risks by requiring charities to have a track record of successful Gift Aid claims.
However, some charities will not yet have built up 3 years of Gift Aid claims. For example, due to difficulty in collecting and storing declarations for certain types of donations (e.g. collecting tins). This is exactly the logic for creating the new Small Donations Scheme, but as the Bill stands, those charities will be unable to access the Scheme – at least for a number of years. Other charities that will be affected are those that are relatively new.
We would invite consideration of this issue and support an amendment to this clause to make provision for these charities. For example, to enable them to register for Gift Aid and begin claiming a lower amount under the Small Donations Scheme each year until their 3 year track record has been built up.
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