Charity pens hit by Customs ruling on VAT
Howard Lake | 9 July 2003 | News
The free charity pen beloved by many direct marketing fundraisers could disappear following a ruling on VAT.
HM Customs and Excise is to require suppliers to charge VAT on pens to charities who insert them in fundraising direct mail packs. This will probably make this model too expensive for charities to continue to use.
Mail packs can be zero-rated for VAT but Customs spotted that suppliers were applying this zero rating to pens added to packs, so stepped in to stop this.
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The pen pack has worked well for some organisations, particularly Amnesty International which ran a pen pack as its banker direct marketing pack for years during the 1990s. However, they have been overdone, especially by charities sending out donor ‘questionnaires’ whose data was seldom acted upon.
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.