New Gift
Aid declarations will be trialled “in a live environment” this summer as part
of the government’s drive to encourage more donors to sign up to the tax
rebate.
The tests will be carried out by a ‘promotion and declaration’
working group – containing fundraising practitioners and behavourial insights
experts – that aims to reach initial conclusions by this autumn.
Research conducted by the group –
to be chaired jointly by HMRC and the Treasury and reporting to the Charity Tax
Forum – will be supplemented by “customer closeness”
work.
However, whichever option is chosen will remain as an opt-in as
the government has rejected calls to move to an opt-out system – whereby donors
are presumed to be eligible to claim Gift Aid and opt out if they are not – and
that the new declarations will require donors to give “informed consent”.
The government’s response to the consultation points out that 40
per cent of adult Britons are no longer paying income tax.
“It is therefore clear that any changes made to the Gift Aid
declaration should be careful to increase donors’ understanding that they must
have paid tax in order to use Gift Aid,” the Treasury says.
“Changes will need to address the challenge of making it easier
for donors to apply Gift Aid to eligible donations at a time when the number of
eligible donors is reducing, while helping to ensure that Gift Aid is not
applied incorrectly to ineligible donations.”
Greater role for intermediaries
The Treasury’s consultation response also states that
‘intermediaries’ – such as an online giving platforms or text-to-donate
services – will take a role in collecting and passing on Gift Aid declarations
to charities or other intermediaries to make the Gift Aid Claim. This will be
legislated in the Finance Bill 2015, with subsequent secondary legislation to
fill in the full details, including a definition of ‘intermediary’.
Secondary legislation will also allow a single declaration to
cover multiple charities through a single intermediary and set out the
regulatory framework for the intermediaries, which the Treasury says will be
based on the regulatory regime for payroll giving agencies.
No universal database
The government said it would not establish a universal gift aid
declaration database – which would have meant that donors only need to opt-in
to the Gift Aid scheme once, rather than every time they make a donation to a
new charity.
However, information provided by respondents would be used in
“supporting longer-term thinking about the future of Gift Aid administration”.
The Treasury’s consultation – aimed at addressing barriers in
access to Gift Aid when making donations through digital channels, including
text and online – ran between July and September 2013 and received 100
responses.
(Source: UK Fundraising)
