New gift aid declaration service Charities Online has had nearly 1,000 charity users register with it so far, the HMRC has revealed.

The system officially launched on Monday and Roger Blake, senior policy adviser at HRMC, revealed the number of users at the Charity Tax Group’s annual conference in London yesterday.

“The latest figures I’ve seen have nearly 1,000 users already gone through the enrolment process,” Blake told civilsociety.co.uk and the rest of the delegates. “Although obviously they haven’t been activated yet because they’re waiting for their activation pins to come through the post.

“But given the short period of time we’ve been live, it’s very encouraging that that number have already gone through the initial steps to go online.”

Blake added that while the process of getting online “can sound rather daunting”, it is a one-off process, and that there is comprehensive guidance on the ‘online services’ section of the HMRC website.

“If you try and use it, it is actually really simple to go through the service,” Blake insisted.

CTG – in association with CFG, NCVO and the Institute of Fundraising – has published its own briefing on Charities Online, available from the Group here.

Elsewhere at Wednesday’s conference, CTG’s Richard Bray outlined some of his concerns about the Charities Online system.

These included the requirements of a more rigid system for claiming gift aid having the potential for declarations to actually fall; and the time, resource and cost burden that it will put on charities.

Bray also questioned how some charity volunteers will cope with the complexities and greater demands of Charities Online (which he said “goes against the drive for simplicity”); and said that clarification was needed on enduring declarations with no postcode and “gone aways”, donors who may have moved and whose address is unknown.

"Claiming online is an inevitable thing," Bray said, "[but] there are a lot of difficulties ahead, problems as well as benefits."