Gift Aid - What are the implications for charities of the Treasury Consultation on Gift Aid?

W15 Wed 1545

After the 2007 budget, Third Sector backlash about the 2% loss on Gift Aid prompted a Treasury-led nationwide consultation on Gift Aid whose report is due in the spring.

Charles Bagnall of the Institute of Fundraising Technology Group will lead a group of experts including Andy Jones of HMRC Charities Division and Barry Gower of GAIN for an interactive workshop exploring the knock on effects of  this exercise for charity database managers. The consultation has raised a number of intriguing possibilities. Will we have online submissions and real time auditing to ease the administrative burden? What about a central register of Gift aid Declarations? Can we reduce the risks of future percentage losses by a special Gift aid relief rate, or a composite tax rate? What about changing the way Higher Rate tax payers are treated? Of course, as the Technology Group we will be asking, what are the implications for IT systems in all of this? This should prove both an excellent chance to review how you manage Gift Aid claims through the many software packages currently available, and an opportunity to put your ideas for change to the taxman himself.