Gift Aid

[susieq]

If you regularly give to charity (monetary donations or old clothes to a shop) and you pay Income Tax have you thought of Gift Aiding your donation ?

I have done so for a number of years now, but it recently really came home to me how much difference this can make. In the last few weeks I have taken a lot of Mum's clothes that she no longer wears to our local Hospice charity shop and I've had a letter from them confirming that, so far, they've realised £105 from the sale of these clothes - so with the Income Tax they've been able to reclaim it's actually more like £126 !

It doesn't cost you anything to do this - all you need to do is fill in a simple form and they give you a little credit card sized card to show each time you donate goods.If you donate money online to any charity there is usually a check box to tick to confirm that you pay Income Tax.

p.s. most charity shops will also take clothes / fabrics that they can't sell 'cos they are just too tatty - BUT they can sell these on to the 'rag' man and get paid by the bagful. The fabric then goes to be recycled so it's good for the environment too I usually bag up the tatty stuff seperately and label the bag "rags" so the girls i the shop don't have the bother of going through loads of stuff that is no good for selling in the shop.

[cotula]

Thanks for mentioning this, Susie. I help in one of our local hospice's shops one afternoon a week, when I first started, to do the necessary data entry for Gift Aid.

One thing I would add - please be aware that you need to 'sign up' for Gift Aid with each charity separately. The taxman doesn't want to make it too easy for charities to get at Gift Aid money, by allowing us one card to cover all!

Also, some volunteers in the shops occasionally forget to ask if you Gift Aid, so when you take a donation of goods in, please say you want to Gift Aid.

[rosemary]

have big skips in the car park and they take material stuff, even socks, and make money from it all as rags.
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We have those containers in a car park at the top of our street, local stadium. Like you said, clothes,bedding etc,even old shoes. Other side is the recycling section for empty bottle/papers etc, even books.

Also CarersUK do giftaid too
see here http://www.carersuk.org/get-involved/ma ... n/gift-aid

[Bluebird]

I used to use Gift Aid with the charities that I donate to, but I was told that now I only earn Carers Allowance and nothing else, that I cannot class myself as paying income tax? I am exempt from paying tax on my savings as I don't earn enough. Does anyone know if I can start using Gift Aid or not please?

[susieq]

I used to use Gift Aid with the charities that I donate to, but I was told that now I only earn Carers Allowance and nothing else, that I cannot class myself as paying income tax? I am exempt from paying tax on my savings as I don't earn enough. Does anyone know if I can start using Gift Aid or not please?

Sorry Blue but you can't use it - it an only be reclaimed by the charity if you are paying standard rate (or above) Income Tax. Carers Allowance falls a long way short of the tax threshol.