I am attending EAG for the first time (in London) and I made a £400 ‘donation’ as recommended for the registration. However, it looks like this is not tax deductible.
Am I correct that this is not tax deductible?
If it is tax deductible, let me know what I should do to correct things!
If it is not tax deductible, is there a way for it to become tax deductible? E.g. some way of donating to EA Infrastructure Funds, ear-marking it for EAG conferences.
As always, if this is explained somewhere else already, let me know. I tried searching but did not find anything.
Photo of jar of coins in preview image is by Josh Appel on Unsplash
Hi Lovkush, Ollie from the CEA events team here.
We are not claiming Gift Aid on the donations which relate to EAG London this year.
However, this is separate from your own personal tax reliefs, which you can claim on your donations in your personal tax return (and which does not depend on whether Effective Ventures, our parent organisation, claims Gift Aid).
How sure are you about this? The boxes on the UK Self Assessment Tax Return (link below, it’s on page 6) where I declare my donations ask for things like “Gift Aid Payments made in the year…”. So I wouldn’t include non-Gift-Aid payments there and I’m not sure where else they would go.
In general, the core tax concept for various reliefs in the UK is Adjusted Net Income. The page defining it (linked below) explicitly calls out Gift Aid donations as reducing it but not anything else.
I’d appreciate a link if I’m wrong about this.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6613fc8a213873b991031b88/SA100_2024.pdf
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/adjusted-net-income
Thanks for your comment AGB, and sorry I didn’t give enough detail initially. I’ve checked with relevant people internally, and our thoughts are below.
HMRC uses “Gift Aid” (in both the form and their Adjusted Net Income page) to mean that the donation was eligible for Gift Aid in the charity’s hands. We don’t have to claim Gift Aid for the donation to be eligible (and HMRC does not expect donors to confirm this).
If you donated £400 for EAG London and you’re filling out the self-assessment tax return, you would add £400 to boxes 5 and 6 of the Charitable Giving section (as a “one off” donation, because EAG London is not a regular monthly donation). The level of tax relief you receive will depend on your own income levels through the year, and this isn’t something we can comment on.
We aren’t currently planning on claiming Gift Aid on the donations to EAG London to reduce administrative overhead, but we might possibly revisit that in future years. We will take another look at our website language, as we’ve had a few people ask about Gift Aid, and so we may not have been clear enough that our decision on whether or not to claim Gift Aid does not actually impact an individual donor’s tax filing position.
Thanks for clarifying. I agree that Gift Aid eligibility is the key question; HMRC does not expect me to have insight into the administration of every charity I donate to, and it’s not like they care if charities don’t take the ‘free’ money they are entitled to! In other words, whether CEA claims does not matter but whether it could claim does.
However, in order for the charity to be entitled a Gift Aid declaration must be completed:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/charities-detailed-guidance-notes/chapter-3-gift-aid#chapter-36-gift-aid-declarations
“Without this declaration, a donation from an individual will not qualify as a Gift Aid donation.”
I do not recall filling one in when I last paid for EAG—which was multiple years ago to be clear—and without that declaration it is not in fact a Gift Aid donation, in my non-professional opinion of course but it’s based on that link. So I did not feel comfortable claiming. Others’ mileage may vary.
I’m glad to hear you are reconsidering the website language.
Thanks AGB (and Rasool below),
I’m looking into this. Again, it seems our language here hasn’t been clear enough and I want to make sure I’m as clear as possible when I respond.
I also don’t feel comfortable claiming this as a Gift Aid eligible ‘donation’
I can’t remember the wording on the registration page, but I think it was phrased around purchasing a ticket, rather than making a donation
And as you said, there wasn’t any mention of Gift Aid declarations (regardless of whether CEA was going to do anything with that)
Even the confirmation email I got said ‘Date of purchase’ (rather than ‘Date of donation’ or similar)
While it is true that you could have gotten a free ticket meaning that there was no extra benefit in paying (pointed out by domdomegg here)
I’m not sure how it works given that there was an application process and your application could be rejected
More importantly, HMRC seem to be wise to the idea of treating all ticket purchases as donations, in 3.43.6 here it states:
And I’m pretty sure the wording on the registration page was something like “£400 lets us recoup the cost from running the event” or similar.
So I don’t think HMRC would see these payments as ‘monies received as fundraising during an event that the charity put on’ rather than ‘ticket price for an event’ (which is not an eligible donation)
Is there much administrative overhead to claim Gift Aid?
If 500(?) people are paying £400 (for a total of £200,000), you can claim £50,000 from the government which seems like it should be worthwhile
And it’s not too late to collect people’s Gift Aid declarations (section 3.6.3 here)
Thanks Ollie. I didn’t know that personal tax relief was separate from Gift Aid. Useful information!
Are you asking for UK, US, or elsewhere?
I am personally asking for the UK, but I assume answers for other regions will be useful for other people.
Separate to this post, I emailed the EAG team and they replied with this option: “You could choose a free ticket and donate here through Giving What We Can, which is eligible for gift aid.”
Unfortunately I already registered, but will do this in future.