Tax money to charity

999mph

I heard from a friend of mine that it is possible to pass on our Inland Revenue contributions direct to charity. Is it really possible or was he just having me on? :beer:

spend_spend_spend

Yes it is true I'm just in the process of setting up the spend spend spend all you can charity, all donations welcome :beer:

jeremycb

I think you are probably referring to Gift Aid which is an inland revenue system where charities can claim the tax back on your gift. Therefore if you give £10 the chartiy can normally reclaim 22% i.e. £2.20. If you are a 40% tax payer you can then reclaim the other 18%.

The inland revenue website has some explanation on this.

Bean_Counter

jeremycb wrote: »

Therefore if you give £10 the chartiy can normally reclaim 22% i.e. £2.20.

Sorry to be picky, but the charity can reclaim 28.2% (22/78) of the amount, at least until the basic rate of tax changes!

That's why for those of us involved in charity, gift aid is important.

Savvy_Sue

999mph wrote: »

I heard from a friend of mine that it is possible to pass on our Inland Revenue contributions direct to charity. Is it really possible or was he just having me on? :beer:

I don't think he was having you on, although the way you've put it may be a bit misleading.

Nope, he wasn't:

From Giving SA repayments to charity:

From April 2004 people who complete a Self Assessment tax return will be able to nominate a charity to receive all or part of any repayment due to them. The Inland Revenue repaid around £3 billion to nearly 3 million Self Assessment taxpayers last year.

So, you have to be a Self Assessment person, and HMRC has to owe you money. Plus the charity you want to nominate has to pre-register with HMRC (ours did, which is why I remember this!).

I don't think anyone has ever done this for us, but Gift Aid is a wonderful thing which many of our supporters use.