Gift Aid
Gift Aid declarations
Section titled “Gift Aid declarations”Whisper must have a valid Gift Aid declaration on file for all donors listed in a claim, at the time that the claim is made.
There’s an editable Gift Aid declaration PDF here which you can email to supporters. You will need to explain that they can type directly into the PDF, save it and mail it back, otherwise some people will think that they have to print it out, write on the printed form and scan it, which reduces the chance that you will receive their declaration.
Supporters whose declarations are over three years old should be emailed to check that they are still UK taxpayers and that their address hasn’t changed, attaching a blank copy of the Gift Aid declaration PDF to the email.
How to make a claim
Section titled “How to make a claim”Unless there’s a large amount of Gift Aid to be claimed, Whisper normally makes an annual claim in July after Whisper’s financial year end. This is because the annual report and accounts are prepared in July, so the bank and PayPal records that are needed to prepare the Gift Aid claim become available at that time.
Whisper can claim Gift Aid up to 4 years after the end of the tax financial year (5 April) in which the donation was made.
HMRC’s instructions for making a Gift Aid claim are available here in the section Make a Claim.
Gift Aid claim spreadsheets are available here. Whisper uses LibreOffice spreadsheets for Gift Aid claims.
Whisper has a Gift Aid claim preparation spreadsheet which will help you to populate the Gift Aid claim spreadsheet from the bank and PayPal records as they appear in Whisper’s bookkeeping spreadsheet.
HMRC Charities Reference
Section titled “HMRC Charities Reference”Whisper’s HMRC Charities Reference, which allows Whisper to claim Gift Aid, is XT26952.
Third party claims
Section titled “Third party claims”To authorise a third party (typically a fundraising platform that’s not itself a charity) to claim Gift Aid on Whisper’s behalf, a form ChV1 has to be completed and sent to HMRC. The current third party authorisations that we have are:
- JustGiving
- Enthuse (pending)
Responsible Persons and Authorised Officials
Section titled “Responsible Persons and Authorised Officials”There are two types of people who can represent the charity when dealing with HMRC and submit Gift Aid claims: Responsible Persons and Authorised Officials. We currently have three Responsible Persons:
- Veronika Cejpkova
- Antonio Genco
- Pavla Rezakova (former trustee, should be removed)
Authorised Officials are people (in our case volunteers) who are just authorised to submit Gift Aid claims. We have applied for Nina to be an Authorised Official.
Details of changes to Responsible Persons and Authorised Officials should be reported using form ChV1 as described here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/change-a-charitys-details. Whenever possible this should be done online but if either of the two people completing the Declaration at the end of the form live abroad, the PDF/paper ChV1 form must be used instead.
HMRC support
Section titled “HMRC support”Detailed Gift Aid guidance is available here.
If you have a question about Gift Aid, HMRC has an excellent charity support facility, previously including the option of webchat during office hours, here. Since the COVID-19 lockdown, the webchat facility has been replaced by a contact form.
When communicating with HMRC you should use Whisper’s HMRC Charities Reference, as shown above.