Government Scraps ‘SA Donate’

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The SA Donate scheme allows a Self-Assessment taxpayer to direct any tax refund to a charity which has registered with HMRC to receive such sums.  Section 429 of the Income Tax Act (ITA) 2007 allows for such redirections of a tax refund to be eligible for tax relief under Gift Aid.

As the deadline for Self-Assessment has just passed, it is worthwhile mentioning that Budget 2011 announced that this scheme will cease to exist for SA tax returns for tax year 2011/12 onwards.  The Finance Bill 2012 will include a section to repeal the above section 429 in ITA 2007.

HMRC advise that the scheme has not been widely used and would require extensive (and expensive) upgrades to safeguard it from fraud.  Whilst a taxpayer will not be able to donate to the charity via their tax return, they can still make donations themselves and claim the necessary Gift Aid.

Further Information

• HMRC  – SA Donate Withdrawal Impact Assessment

Tags: finance bill 2012, ITA, SA Donate, Self Assessment

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 26th, 2012 at 10:08 and is filed under Self Assessment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.