A half-formed Gift Aid thought
Browsing through the letters page of yesterday’s Telegraph (generally the third – and last – useful thing in the paper after Matt and Alex) whilst at my parents for dinner, I came across this:
SIR – If the Government is considering backtracking on its proposed cap to tax relief for higher-rate taxpayers who donate to charity, it will lose what little credibility remains.
Gift Aid is morally dubious. By what right am I forced to donate my taxes to a charity which I might disagree with?
George Osborne, the Chancellor, should show courage in facing down the pressure groups that represent these charities.
Joseph Adam-Smith
Patna, Ayrshire
Little comment is required about the first paragraph except to note that I’m fairly certain that the credibility of this government has already long since disappeared.
It was the second paragraph though which caught my attention. Whilst Mr Adam-Smith is quite right to point out that, with Gift Aid, some money is more then likely to go to causes which he might not agree with, he doesn’t appear to have followed this thought through to its logic conclusion.
Anyone familiar with the fake charities concept will already know that millions of pounds of taxpayer’s money has been shovelled into the hands of groups such as ASH, Alcohol Concern, CASH (amongst others) which do nothing but lobby the government on ‘our’ behalf.
All of which though is peanuts compared to the amount of money which the government steals from us each year in order to fund its own bloated existence. If Mr Adam-Smith can’t find something in that to complain about I would be very surprised.
Thus he would, I feel, be far better off worrying about the approximately £750bn elephant standing on his chest rather than the £1bn spider riding on the elephant’s shoulder.
But Joseph’s taxes aren’t being spent on charities he disagrees with. It’s the taxes that the person using the gift aid paid to the government being reimbursed to the charity. That’s because charitable giving is considered to be have been done nett of tax.
I meant GROSS of tax. Before tax is paid. Duh. Where’s my coffee?
While you may be correct in practice, in theory we can kick the mahout riding elephant every five years or less. We can’t kick the spider, in fact we mostly don’t even know the spider exists. I’d rather eliminate the spider and shrink the elephant.
So far as I can see, it doesn’t matter who the mahout is as the elephant only ever seems to grow in size.
All together after me… when a donation attracts gift aid, it’s not the government giving money to the charity, it’s the government refraining from taking money away.
I guess it depends on how the donation is done?
If I could afford to out a cheque for £Xm to a charity then no doubt I’m already filling out a tax return and am in the habit of making sure I only pay the necessary tax.
If, on the other hand, I’m on PAYE then my a portion of my salary is stolen as tax at source and I’m not (unless I have other income) filling out a tax return. Donations via sites such as JustGiving allow me to add gift aid to my generosity but I’m not – unless i am missing something – seeing a reduction in the amount taken from me at source (pocket change though it might be). Instead it is given to the charity out of the huge pile of tax money collected rather than a specific pot.
No doubt someone will point out to me where I have gone wrong…
It needs a Fake Charity list but who’ll compile it?
Well DK is still trying to keep his original concept going…