Gift Aid Declarations

Gift Aid > Getting Started > Gift Aid Declarations

Gift Aid Declarations

The Declaration is the most important part of Gift Aid, as it records the information required by the Inland Revenue to allow you to reclaim the tax paid on the donations. The Gift Aid Declaration must contain the following:

The name of your church. This can include acronyms, such as PCC.
The donor’s full name. We recommend you obtain the donor’s full name, however first name and surname, or initials and surname are acceptable, providing individual donors can be clearly identified
The donor’s address
The donor’s postcode
A description of the donations to which the declaration relates
A declaration can cover a specific gift or it can be open ended. Example descriptions are:
• The donation of £…I made to you on dd/mm/yyyy
• The enclosed donation
• All donations I make on or after the date of this declaration.
• All donations I have made since 6 April 2000 and all donations I make hereafter. (This date should be no more than six years previously.)
A declaration that the donations are to be treated as Gift Aid donations
Examples of this are:
• Please treat my donations as Gift Aid donations.
• I want my donations to be Gift Aid donations.
• Please reclaim tax on my donations.
• I want the charity to reclaim tax on my donations.
• Tick here if you want us to reclaim tax on your donations.
A note explaining the tax requirement
This should explain clearly to donors that they must be UK taxpayers and pay sufficient tax to use Gift Aid. For example, if you want to reclaim £10 on a donation, the donor must pay at least £10 income or capital gains tax during that tax year. Example wording is:
• You must pay an amount of income tax or capital gains tax equal to the tax we reclaim on your donations
• Remember to notify us if you no longer pay an amount of income tax or capital gains tax equal to the tax we
reclaim on your donations

We also strongly recommend that your Declaration also includes:

The donor’s signature
The date the Declaration was signed

Although neither of these are usually statutory Inland Revenue requirements, we recommend their inclusion to show that the donor authorised the Gift Aid Declaration. The Inland Revenue only require the date on the Declaration where it serves to identify that a particular donation or donations are to come within the scheme. Most of the details on a Declaration can be pre-printed. However, if there is no part on the written declaration completed by the donor, the church will find it difficult to prove that the Declaration was genuine.

You may want to use HMRC's model declaration, but beware that their current model has neither date nor signature. We recommend that you add these to the Declaration.

Oral Declarations

Declarations may be made orally – over the telephone or even in person to a church representative eg at the church door. Although this is no longer compulsory, we recommend that you send the donor a written record of the declaration showing:

all the details provided by the donor in his oral declaration, ie
- the donor’s full name
- the donor’s full address
- the donor’s post code
- the church’s name
- a description of the donations to which the declaration
relates
- a statement to the effect that the donor wants his
donations to be Gift Aid donations
a note explaining that the donor must pay an amount of income tax or capital gains tax at least equal to the tax deducted from his or her donations
a note explaining the donor’s entitlement to withdraw the declaration retrospectively at any time within the period of 30 days after the copy declaration was sent to them.
the date on which the donor gave you the declaration.
the date on which you send the written record to the donor.

You may wish to use a copy of your standard Gift Aid form when taking the oral declaration so that you can ensure that you have gathered all the data you require. If so, we recommend that you mark the top of the form "Oral Declaration", and attach a copy of the letter that you send.