Self-Assessment: Filling in the gift aid section if you *don't* want to claim additional tax relief

DeeBeeBee

Just got off the phone with the HMRC help line. Their official response is "If you don't want to claim the extra tax relief, just answer 'NO' to the 'Did you give to charity question." 

As several of you suggested – thanks!

MyRealNameToo

DeeBeeBee said:

Just got off the phone with the HMRC help line. Their official response is "If you don't want to claim the extra tax relief, just answer 'NO' to the 'Did you give to charity question." 

As several of you suggested – thanks!

The "yes" option is effectively for a broader question of if you made donations to charity and want to claim higher rate relief. If you answer yes to both parts then select yes, if you didnt give to charity and/or for some reason dont want to claim the relief then you tick no. 

Curious as to why you want to pay more tax though? Your claiming relief doesnt impact what the charities receive only what the government does. 

DeeBeeBee

@MyRealNameToo

It looks like your interpretation is correct – the question could just do with  being a little less ambiguous though (particularly when read in conjunction with the 'you will be executed if you make false statements' box at the end of the form. There's an element for feedback in the process and I'll mention that.

As for why I don't want to claim: there are two main reasons.

First of all, the sum involved would be tiny and not worth my time trawling through records to come up with a half way accurate figure. I'll try to keep more careful records in future, but 

But beyond that I don't really feel comfortable gaining financially from something which I looked upon at the time as purely a gift. Yes, I could go through the effort of claiming and then give the surplus to a specific charity, but public services have to be paid for and I've no problem with contributing towards the cost through tax. It won't reduce my giving to charities if I don't claim because I don't have a specific budget for donations anyway. 

BTW: I'm  not saying at all that anybody who does claim it back is acting immorally – it's a perfectly legitimate and wholly legal thing to do and that's fine. But it's not for me.

MyRealNameToo

You won't be fined, go to jail or executed for paying more tax than you need to.

There's lots of ways to look at it... why does a leading children's hospital need to be a charity? Or a charity provide palliative care? Some would argue that these are things taxes not charities should be funding therefore you providing the funding rather than the government is a more significant question than the small tax you manage to avoid as a reward.

Certainly get the time -v- reward consideration though. 

saajan_12

DeeBeeBee said:

First of all, the sum involved would be tiny and not worth my time trawling through records to come up with a half way accurate figure. I'll try to keep more careful records in future, but 

.

Well technically checking two things based on the amount of the charity contributions: are you due any higher rate tax back AND did you pay enough basic rate tax covering the gift aid. In practice if you're confident the second question doesn't come close to being a worry then there's going to be no impact if you just answer 'No', but if you want to be precise, part of claiming gift aid at the time does require keeping these records in order to declare correctly. 

DeeBeeBee said:

But beyond that I don't really feel comfortable gaining financially from something which I looked upon at the time as purely a gift. Yes, I could go through the effort of claiming and then give the surplus to a specific charity, but public services have to be paid for and I've no problem with contributing towards the cost through tax. It won't reduce my giving to charities if I don't claim because I don't have a specific budget for donations anyway. 

BTW: I'm  not saying at all that anybody who does claim it back is acting immorally – it's a perfectly legitimate and wholly legal thing to do and that's fine. But it's not for me.

Well if you see the tax back on charitable contributions as a 'gain' then how is the gift aid portion any different? You could have just contributed the amount incl gift aid yourself and not claimed gift aid.

If you're trying to follow the rules and pay your fair share of tax then getting the extra higher rate tax paid back is part of that, not a gain. If then want to pay extra tax to support public services, then why link that to the charitable givings, just pay an extra £x to HMRC