Work for Charity - Any Tax Breaks Due?

oompahloompah

Sorry if this has been answered before; I did a search but can't find anything.

Briefly, our business, once a year, does some free work for a local charity.

Anyway, I was wondering if there was any tax break available to us for doing this - I understand that if we were donating equipment etc we could write off the cost, and if we were making a cash donation we would get a tax break, but neither of these apply here. I'm asking about allowances for the expenses incurred - could we put these through as normal business expenses? We do the same work for the charity we do for our usual customers, we just don't charge the charity for it.

I have contacted the Inland Revenue (various departments) but no-one seems to know the answer to this - does anyone here know?

Thanks

chriiiiiiiis

I thought it was only the company that gets any relief.

You're volunteering and any costs that the company incurs whilst you're volunteering they can get relief on.

fengirl_2

It's called corporate social responsibility - time given freely by businesses to benefit the community.

oompahloompah

chriiiiiiiis wrote: »

I thought it was only the company that gets any relief.

Sorry if I was unclear, that's what I was asking. We're just a small business and delighted to help the charity raise funds, but I was just wondering if there was some way we could reclaim the costs to ourselves ( travel expenses etc) via the tax returns.

We will do the fundraising anyway but it just seemed a bit silly paying more tax that we had to.

oompahloompah

fengirl wrote: »

It's called corporate social responsibility - time given freely by businesses to benefit the community.

I wasn't looking to be compensated for our time at all - we volunteer willingly. As I said, I was just wondering if there was some way we could reclaim tax relief on our costs - since there is no "sale" there is nothing to attribute a "cost of sale" to in the accounts. We're not some large corporation, just people working from home trying to do our bit :rolleyes:

RayWolfe

It's good that you want to do charitable work but you wonder if you can get tax payers to pay for it? Is that the question?

oompahloompah

RayWolfe wrote: »

It's good that you want to do charitable work but you wonder if you can get tax payers to pay for it? Is that the question?

No, that's not the question at all. I am a taxpayer too. I do not want to be paid at all for any of the charity work. What I am asking is, is there a tax relief available on the COSTS TO THE BUSINESS of what we do.

I'm sorry I asked now. I read on here about people getting excited by claiming tax relief on washing your own clothes for goodness sake; all I was wanting to find out was there a legitimate way to claim tax relief on expenses.

oompahloompah

Thanks Jimmo.