#Gift Aid

[news-buzz]

Martin Lewis explains how Brits can reclaim cash through the use of Reward Assist | Private Finance | Finance Information Buzz

Martin Lewis has revealed why he believes Brits must be opting into Reward Assist when making donations to charity. The MoneySavingExpert founder, who recurrently seems on TV giving his high recommendations on how you can make the perfect use of their money, posted a video on X explaining why British taxpayers ought to say “sure indeedy” to Reward Assist after making a donation. Reward Assist is…

[georgeshutcheson]

Tax Relief on Gift Aid

New Post has been published on https://www.fastaccountant.co.uk/tax-relief-on-gift-aid/

Tax Relief on Gift Aid

In this article, you will learn about tax relief on gift aid and how to maximize your donations through the Gift Aid scheme. By donating to a charity, you can not only support a good cause but also receive tax relief. Through the Gift Aid scheme, charities and community amateur sports clubs (CASCs) can claim an additional 25p for every £1 donated. To ensure that the charity can claim this extra amount, you must make a Gift Aid declaration. It is important to note that to qualify for tax relief on gift aid, donations should not exceed four times the amount of tax paid in a tax year.

Maximize your donations through the Gift Aid scheme

Donating to a charity can provide tax relief through the Gift Aid scheme. Not only does this benefit charities and community amateur sports clubs (CASCs), but it also allows donors to make a greater impact with their contributions. By understanding the rules and limitations of the scheme, you can maximize your donations and ensure that both you and the charity reap the rewards.

What is the Gift Aid scheme?

The Gift Aid scheme is a government initiative that allows charities and CASCs to claim an additional 25p for every £1 donated by UK taxpayers. This means that for every £1 you donate, the charity can receive £1.25 through Gift Aid. It is a simple and effective way to increase the value of your charitable donations.

The benefits of Tax Relief on Gift Aid scheme

The Gift Aid scheme provides several benefits, both for the charity and the donor. For charities and CASCs, it means an increase in the total amount of donations they receive. This additional income can be used to support their charitable activities, fund projects, and make a real difference in people’s lives.

For donors, the Gift Aid scheme offers tax relief. By making a Gift Aid declaration, you can ensure that your donation is treated as if you had already deducted basic rate tax from it and qualify for tax relief on gift aid. This means that if you are a basic rate taxpayer, the charity can claim the tax back on your donation, increasing its value by 25%.

How the Gift Aid scheme works

To benefit from the Gift Aid scheme, you must make a Gift Aid declaration when making a donation to a charity or CASC. This can usually be done online or by filling out a form provided by the charity. The declaration confirms that you are a UK taxpayer and gives permission for the charity to claim Gift Aid on your donation.

Once the declaration is made, the charity can claim the additional 25% from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). This money is paid directly to the charity and does not affect the donor’s tax liability. It is a simple and efficient way to increase the impact of your donations.

How can charities and CASCs maximize donations through the Gift Aid scheme?

Charities and CASCs can encourage donors to make the most of the Gift Aid scheme by providing clear information and guidance. Here are some ways they can help donors maximize their contributions:

Claiming an extra 25p for every £1 donated

By highlighting the benefits of Gift Aid to potential donors, charities and CASCs can encourage them to make a Gift Aid declaration. This simple act can result in a significant increase in the total amount of donations received by the organization.

Making a Gift Aid declaration

Charities should make it easy for donors to make a Gift Aid declaration by providing clear instructions and online forms. By simplifying the process, more donors will be willing to make a declaration and allow the charity to claim the additional 25%.

Donation limits under the Gift Aid scheme

It’s important to note that there are limits on the amount of donations that can be made through the Gift Aid scheme. Donations must not exceed 4 times the amount of tax paid in that tax year.

What is Payroll Giving?

Payroll Giving is another way to maximize your charitable donations. It allows you to donate to a charity directly from your salary, before Income Tax is deducted. This means that you receive immediate tax relief on your donation, without having to wait for the charity to claim Gift Aid.

Advantages of Payroll Giving for donors

Payroll Giving offers several advantages for donors. Firstly, it allows you to give regularly to your chosen charities with minimal effort. Once set up, your donations are deducted automatically from your salary, making it a convenient and hassle-free way to support your favourite causes.

Secondly, Payroll Giving provides immediate tax relief. As the donation is deducted before Income Tax is applied, you receive tax relief at your highest rate of tax. This means that higher-rate taxpayers can benefit even more from their donations.

How Payroll Giving works

To set up Payroll Giving, you need to complete a simple application form provided by your employer. You will need to specify the amount you want to donate and the charity you wish to support. Your employer will then deduct the donation from your salary each pay period and pass it on to the chosen charity.

Payroll Giving is a flexible scheme that allows you to change your donation amount or charity at any time. It is a convenient way to maximize your donations and support the causes you care about.

How can higher-rate taxpayers benefit from Tax Relief on Gift Aid scheme?

Higher-rate taxpayers can benefit from the Gift Aid scheme by claiming back the difference between the tax they have paid and what the charity has received. This means that not only do they receive the initial tax relief of 25%, but they can also claim additional tax relief through their self-assessment tax return.

Claiming back the difference in tax paid

To claim the additional tax relief, higher-rate taxpayers need to include their charitable donations on their self-assessment tax return. HMRC will then calculate the difference between the tax they have paid and what the charity has received, and adjust their tax liability accordingly. This can result in a significant reduction in their overall tax bill.

Calculating tax relief for higher-rate taxpayers

For higher-rate taxpayers, the amount of tax relief they can claim is equal to the difference between the higher-rate tax (40% for the current tax year) and the basic rate tax (20% for the current tax year) on the donation. This means that for every £1 donated, a higher-rate taxpayer can claim an additional 20p in tax relief.

For example, if a higher-rate taxpayer donates £100 to a charity through Gift Aid, the charity can claim the additional 25% (£25) directly from HMRC. The taxpayer can then claim back the difference between the higher-rate tax (40% of £100 = £40) and the basic rate tax (20% of £100 = £20), which is £20. In total, the donation is worth £145, with the taxpayer receiving £20 in tax relief.

When can tax relief be claimed for donations made through Gift Aid?

Tax relief for donations made through Gift Aid can be claimed in the current tax year. This means that donations made up until the Self Assessment tax return deadline can be included in the tax relief calculation. It’s important to keep track of your charitable donations throughout the year to ensure that you claim the maximum amount of tax relief.

Deadline for claiming tax relief on gift aid

The deadline for filing your Self Assessment tax return depends on how you choose to submit it. If you file online, the deadline is usually January 31st following the end of the tax year. If you file a paper return, the deadline is usually October 31st following the end of the tax year. It’s important to submit your tax return on time to avoid any penalties or late filing fees.

Eligibility for claiming tax relief

To be eligible for tax relief on donations made through Gift Aid, you must be a UK taxpayer and have paid enough Income Tax or Capital Gains Tax in the tax year to cover the amount of tax that the charity will reclaim. It’s important to keep records of your donations and any Gift Aid declarations you have made to support your claim.

How can donations made through Gift Aid impact the Married Couple’s Allowance?

Donations made through Gift Aid can have a positive impact on the Married Couple’s Allowance. The Married Couple’s Allowance is a tax allowance that is available to married or civil partnered couples. It can reduce your tax bill and increase the amount of money you have available to donate to charity.

Possible increase in Married Couple’s Allowance

By making donations through Gift Aid, you can potentially increase your total charitable donations for the tax year. This increase in donations can result in a higher tax reduction through the Married Couple’s Allowance. It’s important to consult with a tax advisor or refer to HMRC guidelines to understand how your donations can impact your Married Couple’s Allowance.

Conclusion

Maximizing your donations through the tax relief on gift aid scheme benefits both charities and donors. Charities receive additional income to support their charitable activities, while donors receive tax relief on their contributions. By understanding the rules and limitations of the scheme, you can ensure the maximum impact of your donations. Whether you choose to make a Gift Aid declaration or use Payroll Giving, these options provide a convenient and efficient way to support the causes you care about. Make the most of the tax relief on gift aid scheme and make a difference in your community today.

[fvckwithmefamo]

Tax Relief on Gift Aid

In this article, you will learn about tax relief on gift aid and how to maximize your donations through the Gift Aid scheme. By donating to a charity, you can not only support a good cause but also receive tax relief. Through the Gift Aid scheme, charities and community amateur sports clubs (CASCs) can claim an additional 25p for every £1 donated. To ensure that the charity can claim this extra…

[frimleyblogger]

Charity Shops

A look at the fascinating genesis of #charityshops @CharityRetail

At some point 88% of us have bought something from a charity shop, according to the Charity Retail Association (CRA). In 2020 we spent £746 million in them[1], with the average spend per transaction reaching £6.53 in the summer of 2022. There are around 10,200, occupying 3.26% of the UK’s retail units, staffed by some 26,800 full time employees and over 186,000 volunteers[2]. The high street in…

[shhroomer]

I love this orange airpod

[nxtequal]

thing i drew for my friends' engagement ;_;

[shroombell]

they definitely match each other's freak

[haropladraws]

my gift for @aliencatart for tokuholiday 2023!! the prompt I decided to follow up on was for nico to frustratedly try to teach taiga how to play a fighting game. I drew on my own experiences trying to both learn how to play fighting games and use a fight stick, and combining that with how to inject more of their personalities into this made for a really fun draw!!

[iric416]

EMERGENCY SITUATION, PLEASE READ!!

My child and I are facing a DIRE situation and we NEED IMMEDIATE HELP!!!!

Hi everyone, I am fundraising to keep our home from foreclosure and short sale for myself and my child. As a mother who loves and adores her child, I am BEGGING for help!!!

I'm getting out of an unhappy, unsafe relationship that has spanned a dozen years, which includes financial abuse and took important childhood needs away from my child. I am regrouping, but still cannot cover everything on my own. To those ends, I am trying to fundraise to keep us housed, as the potential for foreclosure is imminent.

Because of the pandemic, there have been multiple layoffs and periods of unemployment, but unemployment benefits have been exhausted. We are surviving off of EBT and donations to cover bills. We are immunocompromised and disabled, both of us being ambulatory wheelchair users. We CANNOT be without a place to live because of financial abuse!!

Please, as a mother, I am BEGGING for immediate emergency help!!

We need $6,785.80 to get current, and $1,271.70/month thereafter until we can get income. PLEASE HELP!

[doors-worstenemy]

evan actually draws parkour civ fanart?!?!?!?!! no. but she sure did make a ref sheet to draw fanart later <//3 (emf and seawatt are next on my list ^^)

[tapestryundone]

when the god was made in the image of a man who infiltrated the mind of said god and in doing so made himself intertwined with the form that god took while also being the cause of that form creating a infinite feedback loop of what caused the god and his creator to evoke the very image of the death the creator feared through the form of an animal representing that concept, and the god has faint, undeniably human characteristics given to him by his creator while his creator retained none of it. fuck

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Deb Chachra's "How Infrastructure Works": Mutual aid, the built environment, the climate, and a future of comfort and abundance

This Thursday (Oct 19), I'm in Charleston, WV to give the 41st annual McCreight Lecture in the Humanities. And on Friday (Oct 20), I'm at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.

Engineering professor and materials scientist Deb Chachra's new book How Infrastructure Works is a hopeful, lyrical – even beautiful – hymn to the systems of mutual aid we embed in our material world, from sewers to roads to the power grid. It's a book that will make you see the world in a different way – forever:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612711/how-infrastructure-works-by-deb-chachra/

Chachra structures the book as a kind of travelogue, in which she visits power plants, sewers, water treatment plants and other "charismatic megaprojects," connecting these to science, history, and her own memoir. In so doing, she doesn't merely surface the normally invisible stuff that sustains us all, but also surfaces its normally invisible meaning.

Infrastructure isn't merely a way to deliver life's necessities – mobility, energy, sanitation, water, and so on – it's a shared way of delivering those necessities. It's not just that economies of scale and network effects don't merely make it more efficient and cheaper to provide these necessities to whole populations. It's also that the lack of these network and scale effects make it unimaginable that these necessities could be provided to all of us without being part of a collective, public project.

Think of the automobile versus public transit: if you want to live in a big, built up city, you need public transit. Once a city gets big enough, putting everyone who needs to go everywhere in a car becomes a Red Queen's Race. With that many cars on the road, you need more roads. More roads push everything farther apart. Once everything is farther apart, you need more cars.

Geometry hates cars. You can't bargain with geometry. You can't tunnel your way out of this. You can't solve it with VTOL sky-taxis. You can't fix it with self-driving cars whose car-to-car comms let them shave down their following distances. You need buses, subways and trams. You need transit. There's a reason that every plan to "disrupt" transportation ends up reinventing the bus:

https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/09/when-silicon-valley-accidentally-reinvents-the-city-bus/

Even the cities we think of as motorists' paradises – such as LA – have vast, extensive transit systems. They suck – because they are designed for poor people – but without them, the city would go from traffic-blighted to traffic-destroyed.

The dream of declaring independence from society, of going "off-grid," of rejecting any system of mutual obligation and reliance isn't merely an infantile fantasy – it also doesn't scale, which is ironic, given how scale-obsessed its foremost proponents are in their other passions. Replicating sanitation, water, rubbish disposal, etc to create individual systems is wildly inefficient. Creating per-person communications systems makes no sense – by definition, communications involves at least two people.

So infrastructure, Chachra reminds us, is a form of mutual aid. It's a gift we give to ourselves, to each other, and to the people who come after us. Any rugged individualism is but a thin raft, floating on an ocean of mutual obligation, mutual aid, care and maintenance.

Infrastructure is vital and difficult. Its amortization schedule is so long that in most cases, it won't pay for itself until long after the politicians who shepherded it into being are out of office (or dead). Its duty cycle is so long that it can be easy to forget it even exists – especially since the only time most of us notice infrastructure is when it stops working.

This makes infrastructure precarious even at the best of times – hard to commit to, easy to neglect. But throw in the climate emergency and it all gets pretty gnarly. Whatever operating parameters we've designed into our infra, whatever maintenance regimes we've committed to for it, it's totally inadequate. We're living through a period where abnormal is normal, where hundred year storms come every six months, where the heat and cold and wet and dry are all off the charts.

It's not just that the climate emergency is straining our existing infrastructure – Chachra makes the obvious and important point that any answer to the climate emergency means building a lot of new infrastructure. We're going to need new systems for power, transportation, telecoms, water delivery, sanitation, health delivery, and emergency response. Lots of emergency response.

Chachra points out here that the history of big, transformative infra projects is…complicated. Yes, Bazalgette's London sewers were a breathtaking achievement (though they could have done a better job separating sewage from storm runoff), but the money to build them, and all the other megaprojects of Victorian England, came from looting India. Chachra's family is from India, though she was raised in my hometown of Toronto, and spent a lot of her childhood traveling to see family in Bhopal, and she has a keen appreciation of the way that those old timey Victorian engineers externalized their costs on brown people half a world away.

But if we can figure out how to deliver climate-ready infra, the possibilities are wild – and beautiful. Take energy: we've all heard that Americans use far more energy than most of their foreign cousins (Canadians and Norwegians are even more energy-hungry, thanks to their heating bills).

The idea of providing every person on Earth with the energy abundance of an average Canadian is a horrifying prospect – provided that your energy generation is coupled to your carbon emissions. But there are lots of renewable sources of energy. For every single person on Earth to enjoy the same energy diet as a Canadian, we would have to capture a whopping four tenths of a percent of the solar radiation that reaches the Earth. Four tenths of a percent!

Of course, making solar – and wind, tidal, and geothermal – work will require a lot of stuff. We'll need panels and windmills and turbines to catch the energy, batteries to store it, and wires to transmit it. The material bill for all of this is astounding, and if all that material is to come out of the ground, it'll mean despoiling the environments and destroying the lives of the people who live near those extraction sites. Those are, of course and inevitably, poor and/or brown people.

But all those materials? They're also infra problems. We've spent millennia treating energy as scarce, despite the fact that fresh supplies of it arrive on Earth with every sunrise and every moonrise. Moreover, we've spent that same period treating materials as infinite despite the fact that we've got precisely one Earth's worth of stuff, and fresh supplies arrive sporadically, unpredictably, and in tiny quantities that usually burn up before they reach the ground.

Chachra proposes that we could – we must – treat material as scarce, and that one way to do this is to recognize that energy is not. We can trade energy for material, opting for more energy intensive manufacturing processes that make materials easier to recover when the good reaches its end of life. We can also opt for energy intensive material recovery processes. If we put our focus on designing objects that decompose gracefully back into the material stream, we can build the energy infrastructure to make energy truly abundant and truly clean.

This is a bold engineering vision, one that fuses Chachra's material science background, her work as an engineering educator, her activism as an anti-colonialist and feminist. The way she lays it out is just…breathtaking. Here, read an essay of hers that prefigures this book:

https://tinyletter.com/metafoundry/letters/metafoundry-75-resilience-abundance-decentralization

How Infrastructure Works is a worthy addition to the popular engineering books that have grappled with the climate emergency. The granddaddy of these is the late David MacKay's open access, brilliant, essential, Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air, a book that will forever change the way you think about energy:

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/04/08/sustainable-energy-without-the-hot-air-the-freakonomics-of-conservation-climate-and-energy/

The whole "Without the Hot Air" series is totally radical, brilliant, and beautiful. Start with the Sustainable Materials companion volume to understand why everything can be explained by studying, thinking about and changing the way we use concrete and aluminum:

https://memex.craphound.com/2011/11/17/sustainable-materials-indispensable-impartial-popular-engineering-book-on-the-future-of-our-built-and-made-world/

And then get much closer to home – your kitchen, to be precise – with the Food and Climate Change volume:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/06/methane-diet/#3kg-per-day

Reading Chachra's book, I kept thinking about Saul Griffith's amazing Electrify, a shovel-ready book about how we can effect the transition to a fully electrified America:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/09/practical-visionary/#popular-engineering

Chachra's How Infrastructure Works makes a great companion volume to Electrify, a kind of inspirational march to play accompaniment on Griffith's nuts-and-bolts journey. It's a lyrical, visionary book, charting a bold course through the climate emergency, to a world of care, maintenance, comfort and abundance.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[ceruleanterrapin]

Just a messy doodle I wanted to share 🩼

[mary-games-and-arts]

I made "Mutual Aid" P. 18 fanart :>

Hope you like it @tulipsempai :D

[sea-critter]

Nada is asking for support to protect her child and her mother; their tent has been severely damaged by the intense weather and they need donations to be able to replace it. Let’s make it happen for them!!

To buy a raffle ticket, make your donation to their GFM campaign & send a screenshot to pecan.rising@proton.me

A winner will be drawn in two weeks (12/9/24) & you will receive an email to get your mailing address!

**shipping within US only**

[sephirajo]

Xmas Begging Bowl of 23

Yep, here we are again. This month I am behind on rent (430), need my pain meds, have to pay my bills (power, 60 and cable 120) and buy food. I'm on SSDI, so I only get 1200/mo for two people and I've been sick enough the last month that most of my eating was eating out, being too sick to cook on top of some other expenses that came out of left field. If you can't help, please pass the bowl. If you can toss even five dollars, I promise I use every penny on things I need (and can prove it if you ask, but policing the poor like that is kinda gauche)

As always I have the p_y of p_ls at: paypal.me/Sephirajo

The app of C_sh M_ney at: $Sephirajo

And Kofi at:

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