Gift Aid is flexible, simple and highly beneficial to churches. It allows your givers to increase the value of gifts to their church at no additional cost to themselves.
If they are UK taxpayers, you can reclaim from HMRC Charities the basic rate tax paid on their gifts, boosting it by 25%. A gift of £10 from a Gift Aid donor is worth £12.50 to your church.
Advantages of Gift Aid
- Flexible: It can cover one-off gifts or regular donations
- Simple: It is easy to make a Gift Aid Declaration, an enduring declaration just keeps going and is simple to cancel at any time if the need arises
- Easy to operate: If you give it the time and attention it needs
- Suitable for all UK taxpayers: If they have paid enough tax to cover the Gift Aid claims for all of their charitable giving under Gift Aid, not just what they give to their church
- Retrospective: You can claim on eligible gifts already given. The current HMRC time limit for retrospective claims is four years from receiving a donation to making a claim.
Subject to a few simple rules, your donors can give any amount of money, large or small, regular or one-off, and the church can reclaim the tax, even, backdating claims to cover elgible donations in the last four years. All you need from your donor is a simple but correctly worded Declaration saying that they want to use Gift Aid. A Declaration can cover one or more donations. The church must keep an audit trail for every donation included in any claim.
To simplify Gift Aid in your church, register your parish for the Parish Giving Scheme which takes away all the burden of Gift Aid claiming at no cost to the individual donor or to the church, or consider joining the long standing Diocesan Gift Aid Scheme.
How we can help
-
The Resources Team runs regular briefing sessions for those new to Gift Aid, usually in the autumn. The slides from the most recent briefing session are available in the Links & Downloads below.
- You're welcome to call us at any time with your queries as we will get back to you as soon as possible. We can even arrange a visit to your parish if needed.
For more information and advice contact Cath Gaskell - email
giftaid@liverpool.anglican.org or call 0151 705 2180.
Links & Downloads
New to Gift Aid?
Gift Aid basics slides
HMRC
Gift Aid overview
How to claim
Claim Gift Aid online
Parish Resources
Gift Aid guidance
Data Developments software
datadevelopments.co.uk (Best purchased via Parish Buying)
Parish Buying website
parishbuying.org.uk