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Gift Aid

Posted: March 26th, 2017, 9:28 pm
by stewamax
Unincorporated membership organisation A (which is not a charity) wishes to raise money for registered charity B by holding a social event for which an entrance fee is charged. B (unsurprisingly) agrees.
Payments of entrance fees are made online to A, and on the payment form payers can tick a Gift Aid box that has some attached boilerplate text explaining that Gift aid payers must be UK taxpayers, that if the payer pays less Income or CG tax in the current tax year than the amount of Gift Aid claimed on all of their donations then ...etc blah blah.

Since A is acting a agent for B with 'express actual authority', is there any clash with HMRC's Gift Aid rules? As a member of A I don't want to go through the Gift Aid solicitation palaver and find that B cannot reclaim tax!

Re: Gift Aid

Posted: March 28th, 2017, 8:47 am
by stewamax
... and to clarify my sloppy wording:
- the event entrance 'fee' is entirely voluntary, although there are 'suggested donations'
- HMRC's 'benefit to the donor must be <25% of the donation' rule-of-thumb applies

Re: Gift Aid

Posted: March 28th, 2017, 9:24 am
by chas49
Seems like it could be treated like a sponsored event:

see https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... f-donation

para 3.10.4

Re: Gift Aid

Posted: March 28th, 2017, 12:55 pm
by stewamax
Thanks chas49.
The HMRC guidance is clear(ish) about how those being sponsored can collect donations and pass them - with sponsorship forms - to the charity for the latter to recover tax.
What is less clear is the tax situation when an intermediary organises an event. Sponsors (who may well be entrants sponsoring themselves) pay their donations to the organiser online via the organiser's website and ticking "I want to Gift Aid my donation", and the organiser subsequently pays everything to the charity - passing over copies of the payment advices containing name, address and their "I want to ..." agreement.
It all seems to hinge on the legal relationships between donor, organiser and charity and whether the organiser is acting as an agent of the charity (in which case tax should be recoverable) or as a third party (in which case HMRC may think the donors are 'too far removed' from the charity).