The government has been urged to reform gift aid rules to reduce the estimated millions of pounds that are currently not claimed each year.
Nick Cook, head of UK public affairs at the People’s Postcode Lottery (PPL), called for the change while speaking at a fringe event at the Conservative Party’s annual conference in Manchester on Monday.
He said the government “should be doing far more in thinking outside the box” to increase philanthropic giving, with gift aid reform a priority.
“£500m of gift aid goes unclaimed every year of a total of something like £1.6bn.
“That’s a very simple change. You reform gift aid. You make it easier for people to sign up. That would funnel hundreds of millions to the charity sector,” he said.
The Charity Finance Group (CFG) previously estimated that more than £500m is unclaimed through gift aid each year, with the tax relief generating £1.7m for charities last year.
CTG: ‘Charities are low down the pecking order’
Several sector organisations, including CFG and the Charity Tax Group (CTG), have long proposed gift aid reforms.
Richard Bray, chair of the CTG, told Civil Society: “We would always encourage the government to have big ideas to support charities including those in the tax space.
“For many years, we have argued for a forward-looking approach to gift aid, making the most of digital technology so that gift aid is claimed properly and as easily as possible.
“This fits in perfectly with HMRC’s plans set out recently in the Transformation Road Map.
“This is the government’s vision for a more efficient, modernised and automated tax system.
“But sadly, it seems that charities are low down the pecking order for the investment that is needed to make this happen.
“So, we share Nick Cook’s frustration that the government is not taking charities seriously enough.”
Sales cap removal urged
Cook also renewed PPL’s long-running campaign for annual sales caps on society lotteries to be removed.
In June, the government refused to raise the ticket sales limit on society lotteries despite its research concluding that doing so would increase funding for charities.
The study, which had been commissioned by the previous Conservative government, found raising the annual sales limit on the lotteries from £50m to £100m per operator “would lead to a net increase in returns to good causes of between £16m and £132m”.
Cook, whose organisation is currently the only society lottery constrained in practice by the £50m ticket sales cap, said “bureaucracy continues to restrict what we do in the funding space” and that the government is “not taking it seriously”.
“All governments seem to agree with the principles that civil society should do more, but none of them have really unlocked in that holistic way how to make that happen, and that’s increasingly a big problem for us,” he said.
Civil Society has contacted the government for a response.
