Government says no to charities VAT petition
Howard Lake | 1 August 2007 | News
A petition on the Government’s e-petitions website asking that charities be exempted from paying VAT has met with a firm rejection by the Government.
The petition asked “We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Stop making charities pay VAT.” The rationale for the request was given as: “This is an added expense for groups that are already financially stretched to their limits. Give charities a break. The PM knows how valuable the work of charities are and the pressure they relieve on welfare state services.”
When the petition closed on 21 June 2007 it had attracted 9,445 signatures.
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The government today rejected the petition pointing out that “we provide £2.7 billion of tax relief to charities each year”. It added that “EU VAT agreements, signed by successive governments, mean that it is not now possible to further extend the scope of the zero rates available to charities”.
It argued that two reviews of the issue since 1997 had concluded that the move was neither affordable or likely to be equitable: “there was no fair and principled basis on which we could decide that some charities would be reimbursed their VAT and some would not”.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.