Just to clarify what I meant about Gift Aid: At the moment our membership and donation forms include a Gift Aid declaration which we're encouraging people to fill in. This means that if/when we eventually do become recognised as a charity we will be able to claim all the back payments from HMRC without having to go back to people who donated in the past and ask them to make a retrospective declaration. Of course we don't actually get any money from HMRC until we are recognised but it makes the process simpler afterwards.

When we applied for recognition we specifically asked HMRC whether we could get declarations before we were registered and they said yes we were fine to do that. Given the developments we could either:

1) Continue with the forms as they are
2) Remove the declarations completely, or
3) Continue to ask people for declarations but add a caveat that HMRC are contesting our charitable status and Gift Aid will only be reclaimable if they agree

My suggestion is we do (3) so that it's easier to reclaim if/when we do get recognised.

Andrew

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Cohen" <peterc@cix.compulink.co.uk>
To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Saturday, 25 April, 2009 12:29:00 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal
Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Charity application rejected

In-Reply-To: <84FD18C8-7BAE-4F64-A675-047B6A40019F@mikepeel.net>
Two bits one highlighted from what Andrew Turvey said:

> >  Whilst we can  still get Gift Aid declarations (HMRC
> > have previously confirmed  this was ok) we should probably add a
> > caveat on the form explaining  that our charitable status is
> > contested.

And one from the email from HMRC:
 
> > Wiki UK Ltd is not established for charitable purposes only as  
> > required by the legislation and so is not a charity for tax  
> > purposes. The charity tax examptions and reliefs (including Gift  
> > Aid tax relief) are not, therefore, available to Wiki UK Ltd.

I think you would be on dangerous ground using Gift Aid at all.


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