Claiming Gift Aid from Subscriptions

Civilian Committee
1

Hiya,

Do many Sqns out there claim Gift Aid from their subscriptions? I have to admit is a leading question, and im wondering how it fits in with the HMRC Gift Aid rules.

If we are claiming under the Membership of a Charity rules, then how are we getting round the bit about “To qualify for Gift Aid, charity subscription payments must be for membership only. They must not give members personal use of the charity’s facilities or services.”

Surely the use of our services and training would mean we cannot claim?

Also if we were to try and qualify under The Benefit Rule, which states "When someone makes a donation, you might want to give the donor something in return (an item or service) to say thank you. This is known as a ‘benefit’. Literature that tells donors what your charity does eg a newsletter or a simple plaque to thank a donor, doesn’t count as benefits.

The value of a benefit is always the value to the recipient, not the cost to your charity or CASC. For most benefits, the value is simply the retail value of the item or service."

Our uniform is “free” , however the rules state the value to the recipient, not the cost to the charity, so a full set of kit must be about £300?

In that case, since You can claim Gift Aid on the donation if the value of the benefit doesn’t exceed certain limits, for example:

Donation Maximum value of benefit

up to £100 25% of the donation
£101 - £1000 £25
£1,001 and over 5% of the donation (up to £2,500)

Our uniform exceeds 25% value of the donation?

I would welcome your thoughts and comments

Many thanks

C

2

Our Squadron claims gift aid, never thought about all the issues you raised and neither, I think, has HMRC!!

3

The same, anything paid to the squadron by a qualifying tax payer gets claimed.

4

Whats the process for registering for it?

5

Parents fill in forms, give forms to Treasurer, money appears in account at some point.

I may not have the finer details down but that’s the gist.

2 Likes
6

As I understand it over and above what daws said.
The Treasurer registers with hmrc and they send out a form and then the parents names are put on it and submitted to hmrc. Our treasurer said it wasn’t much of a problem and you can claim itgoing back a few years too.

7

Civcom sets the rate of local subscription which is for membership of the squadron. The cadets are not receiving personal use, they do so as a collective squadron.

It is a good example of how the balance is tight and why the most recent attempt by HQ-ATC to make it seem like Civcom members are actually a part of the ACO when they are not.

So as an independent charity supporting the squadron as a whole, this is not a concern. Where personal hardship might limit participation, the Civcom may elect to waive subscriptions, in which case this doesn’t apply.

Not sure where you are trying to go with donations and uniform - they are not really donated but loaned and do not really form part of the CivCom’s remit or finances. But you should claim Gift Aid. As ‘big-g’ says you can retrospectively claim and I think there is a rolling three-year window.

For me, there is a wider question of whether Wings and HQ claim Gift Aid on the portion of the subs they receive from squadrons who have already claimed Gift Aid on the original subscription …

8

If that happened would not HMRC take a view of an attempt to claim double relief in this case

9

BlockquoteFor me, there is a wider question of whether Wings and HQ claim Gift Aid on the portion of the subs they receive from squadrons who have already claimed Gift Aid on the original subscription …

I don’t think this could happen as the gift aid forms are specific to the Squadron. As far as I’m aware our CivCom don’t send copies of gift aid off to Wing/HQAC and therefore a claim could not be made with explicit consent by the giver.

10

Yep!

I think it would be good to hear reliable confirmation from the horses mouth though. The GPF charity is already funding Wing charities (which is a no-no) according to their accounts. I’m just observing that charitable monies are being moved from one to another and in all directions which is not really accepted (or good) standard practice and this could easily get lost in the mire.

11

I think amounts under £20 per event do not need consent.

Watch out … that will be the next great idea! :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

12

There is a system https://www.gov.uk/claim-gift-aid/small-donations-scheme for small donations that I know our church uses for non enveloped donations/collections.
Not too sure how this would work for a squadron.

13

It doesn’t, it’s been tried and HMRC said “No” it was escalated and HMRC still said “No”. Not sure what the justification is from HMRC for allowing one lot of gift aid but not the other and Insusoect asking too many questions would likely cause us to lose what we already have rather than getting more.

14

Fair enough. Many if not all churches have a gift aid for regular giving and ours have used the gads for other collections.
As you say it seems odd that we can claim one and not the other.

15

We were thinking “cha-ching” from bag packs.

16

Sqns have claimed GASDS on bagpacks regularly - nice little earner

17

We’ve used it…

18

There was an email from HQAC saying not to!

19

how does this work?

Bag pack have anonymous donations as shoppers drop some loose change in the bucket - you can’t really stop someone and ask for name and address for emptying 34p of loose change into a bucket can you??

20

thats the beauty of GASDS, it allows you to claim Gift Aid on donations less than £20, without having the details of the person that is donating - eg bagpacks.

There are some rules to qualify, like having been setup for Gift Aid and having made several successful “normal” claims over a period of a few years.

Regards

C