Archived news - Charities 2002

12 December 2002

Treasury and Home Office recently issued a discussion document on 'Next Steps on Volunteering and Giving in the UK'.

28 November 2002

The following paragraphs in Chapter 3, Gift Aid, in the detailed guidance notes have today been updated:

In addition, two new entries have been made under Section F:

22 October 2002

Chapter 3 ( 3.15.12 and 3.15.13) and Chapter 6 (6.6.5) of our detailed guidance have been amended.

October 2002

Repayment Interest Update

In March we announced that we had identified errors when calculating the amount of interest on repayments made to certain charities. This is to let you know how things are progressing.

We have now reviewed the majority of cases and made sure that those charities we have identified have received their payments. However it is now clear that we will not be able to complete this review by the Autumn of 2002 as we had hoped. It is now unlikely to be finished until March 2003, and we apologise for this delay. We have been very grateful for your patience up to this point.

Please continue to bear with us we go through this process. We will make further announcements to keep you informed.

16 July 2002

A New Gift Aid Brand and Toolkit

20 May 2002

Interim guidance on the new scheme for community amateur sports clubs has been added to the website. The guidance is conditional on the necessary legislation being approved by Parliament and could be subject to change

18 April 2002

Budget 2002

The following documents have been added to our web site.

27 March 2002

Interest on repayments to "corporate" charities

We have discovered that there has been an error in the way in which we have been calculating interest on repayments paid to corporate charities and unincorporated associations after 1 July 1999. Following the introduction of Corporation Tax Self Assessment, interest should have been calculated from the day after the end of the accounting period, rather than, as previously, from nine months after the end of the accounting period.

We are very sorry about this error, and we are now calculating all interest payments on new claims on the correct basis. Over the next six to nine months we are also systematically reviewing all repayment claims sent us after 1 July 1999, to check for those where we will need to recalculate the entitlement to repayment interest. In this process we will concentrate on those claims where at least £10 interest appears to be due. We will conduct the review in chronological order looking at the oldest claims first. We have chosen this initial priority so as to get all but the smallest sums paid to charities within a reasonable time scale. Please bear with us while we go through this process.

When we have completed the initial review (we hope by autumn 2002) we will make an annoucement on our website and send a letter to representative bodies. If you have not received a payment for back interest by the time of this annoucement, we will be very happy, on request, to review your charity's previous repayments and pay any back interest owed. We are leaving the choice to each charity, as many will not wish to bother with very small payments.

We recognise that there may be spcial cases that do not fit into the above programme. If you need us to look at your case out of sequence please:

telephone us on 0151 472 6036 or 6037 or in Scotland on 0131 777 4040

e-mail us at: charities

or write to us at the appropriate address below, giving your reasons.

For England, Wales and Northern Ireland

IR Charities (Repayments)
Room 140
St. John's House
Bootle
L69 9BB

For Scotland

IR Charities
Meldrum House
15 Drumsheugh Gardens
Edinburgh
EH3 7UL

5 February 2002

Welcome to the new pages for Inland Revenue Charities.

We have re-designed our pages, and our aim has been:

  • To make them easier to use for less experienced charity officials and donors
  • To improve the way the pages work for more experienced users.

You will find frequently-asked questions for both charities and donors, links to other government websites, copies of all our forms and leaflets, contact details for us, as well as the full guidance notes setting out our understanding of tax law for charities. We hope you find our new pages helpful and informative. However, we recognise that there will always be room for improvement, and we would welcome your comments to help us improve this service.

If you can think of a way in which we could make our pages work better for you, please e-mail Kevin Lea, whose e-mail address is Kevin.Lea@ir.gsi.gov.uk

Tax Relief and Gifts of Foreign Currency to Charities

Following the announcement by the Chancellor in his Pre Budget Report that donations of foreign currency qualify for tax relief under Gift Aid we have prepared some frequently asked questions that you may find helpful.

Detailed Guidance

The technical guidance we produced following the extensive changes in the 2000 Budget has now been updated.

In Chapter 3 - Gift Aid we have included information on the following matters

3.43 Educational school trips
3.44 Church collections
3.45 Educational Trusts

We have also produced a new annex to the guidance on the subject of Charities: Life Assurance and Capital Redemption Products.