I don't understand the whole giftaid thing!

barak

tyllwyd wrote: »

I never gift aid any charitable donations because I don't want the grief of trying to remember it for my self-assessment tax return. I hate it when charity workers put pressure on me to gift aid - it's my decision whether or not to do it, and as far as I'm concerned they should be grateful for what I'm giving and not hassle me to do more!

With that attitude I'm surprised you ever make any charitable donations.

tyllwyd

barak wrote: »

With that attitude I'm surprised you ever make any charitable donations.

I avoid anything where they want to collect my name and address - I give clothes to charity shops, and contribute to charities through the kid's schools, or put coins in collecting buckets, that kind of thing.

zagfles

tyllwyd wrote: »

I avoid anything where they want to collect my name and address - I give clothes to charity shops, and contribute to charities through the kid's schools, or put coins in collecting buckets, that kind of thing.

I always ask them to not put me on their marketing list and have never had a problem.

Gift aid is so worth it if you're either a higher rate taxpayer, or get tax credits at more than the family element. HRT payers get 25% paid by the taxman and TC claimaints get over 50%! And it's surprising how many things you can gift aid - days out to the zoo, space centre, castles, English Heritage, National Trust, even a model village we went to did gift aid! Usually I rack up about £300-400 a year, and most of that's on days out etc we'd have gone on anyway. You just need to remember to keep the receipts...

tyllwyd

zagfles wrote: »

I always ask them to not put me on their marketing list and have never had a problem.

Gift aid is so worth it if you're either a higher rate taxpayer, or get tax credits at more than the family element. HRT payers get 25% paid by the taxman and TC claimaints get over 50%! And it's surprising how many things you can gift aid - days out to the zoo, space centre, castles, English Heritage, National Trust, even a model village we went to did gift aid! Usually I rack up about £300-400 a year, and most of that's on days out etc we'd have gone on anyway. You just need to remember to keep the receipts...

Hmm, thinking back on all the excursions like that we've done this year, if I had gift aided them, it would have come to roughly .... £0 :eek: Obviously works better for some families than others!

RandyBender

I give to charities in lots of small monthly direct debits and I'm pretty sure I gift aid all of it.
I'm a higher rate tax payer and I have to self assess. I've always had an accountant do my form and he didn't mentioned this but I'm doing my own this year and this caught my eye.

I've got to submit the form for year 10-11, so reading the 5 year rule I can get some tax back on all donations from 5th April 2005 - is that right?

And how do you go about getting proof? Are most charities open to giving you a statement going back that far? I do all big ones like Oxfam, Wateraid, Red cross etc.

Thanks!

Savvy_Sue

I think most of the larger charities I give to send me an annual statement automatically. However any of them should do so if you ask them.

John_Pierpoint

RandyBender wrote: »

I give to charities in lots of small monthly direct debits and I'm pretty sure I gift aid all of it.
I'm a higher rate tax payer and I have to self assess. I've always had an accountant do my form and he didn't mentioned this but I'm doing my own this year and this caught my eye.

I've got to submit the form for year 10-11, so reading the 5 year rule I can get some tax back on all donations from 5th April 2005 - is that right?

And how do you go about getting proof? Are most charities open to giving you a statement going back that far? I do all big ones like Oxfam, Wateraid, Red cross etc.

Thanks!

I think that as a regular self assessment tax payer you face stricter deadlines:

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/about/deadlines-taxpayers.htm

BoGoF

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

I think that as a regular self assessment tax payer you face stricter deadlines:

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/about/deadlines-taxpayers.htm

Indeed for those who have already completed Tax Returns the earliest year you can claim is for 2007-08

RandyBender

Thanks for the replies, I hadn't spotted that 4 year rule when I looked at the HMRC site, not as good as what I thought but better than a poke in the eye!

I'll keep records from now on as I've sponsored the odd moustache grower or comic relief event and ticked the giftaid box, no chance of remembering all those.