Over 50,000 charities using Charities Online for Gift Aid
Howard Lake | 13 February 2014 | News
HMRC has announced that more than 50,000 charities have now signed up to use Charities Online, the online system introduced in April 2013 to make it easier for charities and Community Amateur Sports Clubs (CASCs) to receive the Gift Aid on their donations.
This leaves just under 20,000 charities who claim Gift Aid not yet using the system, which became the only option for claiming Gift Aid since October last year.
Caroline Taylor, Director of Finance at the street children charity Toybox, said:
“We estimate that Charities Online has reduced the time it takes us to process these repayments by around 25%. The repayments for our online submissions have been paid into our bank account between four and seven days after submitting the claim online. Our experience of processing Gift Aid claims through HMRC Online has been very positive.”
Charities Online: the numbers
- The online system has, says HMRC, reduced the time taken to process payments from 29 days, when it was a paper-based system, to nine.
- So far, over £380 million in Gift Aid repayments have been processed by the online system since April 2013.
- The biggest claim made online so far by a single charity has been for £3.7 million.
- The busiest time for the service so far was early September 2013, when nearly 30,000 charities or CASCs visited the site in one week.
- HMRC receives about 187,000 Gift Aid claims a year from approximately 70,000 separate charities, representing about 23 million individual Gift Aid donations.
- Gift Aid payments are part of the £4 billion in dedicated tax reliefs that charities and their donors received in 2013, according to Nicky Morgan, Economic Secretary to the Treasury.
[message_box title=”About Charities Online” color=”blue”]Charities Online was introduced in April 2013 and in October that year became the only approved method of making Gift Aid claims. It is designed to make Gift Aid reclaims quicker and easier for charities. There are two options for making Gift Aid claims online using the Charities Online service, plus a paper option.[/message_box]
Notes for editors
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4. Charities can get information on how to use Charities Online at.
5. Follow HMRC on Twitter @HMRCgovuk
6. HMRC’s flickr channel www.flickr.com/hmrcgovuk
Resource Links
Three options for making claims using Charities Online Charities Online: making your Gift Aid repayments quicker and easier
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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.