Are HMRC happy with Online Express' Gift Aid declarations?

Jack Deeth · October 2015

Hi all,

Can anyone confirm that RE7/OLX's method of storing Gift Aid declarations is sufficiently robust for HMRC?

As far as I can tell, a Gift Aid declaration is silently added to a constituent record at some point in the process of downloading the gifts from OLX into RE7. I know it happens before the gift batch is committed - possibly it occurs when the pending transaction is linked to an RE donor.

It just seems like a very tenuous link between the RE7 record of a declaration and the RE7 record of a person's gift via OLX. There's nothing to show that a declaration was created by OLX.

Per HMRC's guide: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/charities-detailed-guidance-notes/chapter-3-gift-aid

3.7.2 A charity must maintain a clear auditable record of declarations and of the making of those declarations, so that it's able to demonstrate that a donor has in fact made an appropriate declaration. Examples of what HMRC is likely to accept as evidence includes:

...

- a computer record of a declaration template filled in by the donor and containing a link to the donor's banking details

...

Note: the transcribing of declarations given by donors into a database won't satisfy the requirements to have an auditable record as such a record doesn't demonstrate that the donor made the declaration.

That last note worries me - there's no way to 'demonstrate that the donor made the declaration' by showing an inspector the very sparse Declaration Info section of a constituent's record in RE7.

Is there any kind of activity log for OLX stored somewhere, perhaps somewhere inaccessible to hosted users? That would help a lot.

For paper declarations, we record the declaration in the Declaration Information section of the constituent record, scan the paper record and store the image in the constituent record's Media section (with a few copies of the image held elsewhere incidentally), and the paper original then goes into a box in a basement we can theoretically recover. The OLX declarations seem very insubstantial by comparison.

If anyone can give us some peace of mind on this we'd appreciate this!

Michael Steven · October 2015

I have been considering the same issue with NetCommunity - the process is the same, the Gift Aid declaraton is populated on RE with no further information.

Our solution (and I am not sure if this will work with OLX) is to use donation notification emails as evidence - when a donor makes a donation (and ticks the gift aid box) it generates an email to us like this:

Donor Summary:

Gift Aid:

☑ I would like [ORGANISATION NAME] to reclaim tax on all donations I have made in the last four years and all donations I make today and in the future. I confirm that I have paid or will pay UK income tax and/or capital gains tax for each tax year that is at least equal to the amount that all charities and CASCs I donate to will reclaim on my gifts for that tax year. I understand that other taxes such as council tax and VAT do not qualify. I understand that [ORGANISATION NAME] will reclaim 25p of tax on every £1 that I donate on or after 6 April 2008 (28p of tax on every £1 for donations up to 5 April 2008). Date:

Donation Summary:

Please process this transaction through RE - no confirmation needs posted. If the donor has decided to Gift Aid their transaction, please attach this email to their record as evidence.

This way we have an email declaration, which shows the donors name, address and declaration, which we then attach to their RE record as evidence.

The Gift Aid section is *only* added to the email notification if the donor ticks the box, so I think this should be sufficent evidence for HMRC.

Hopefully this would work for you with OLX also!

Thanks,

Mike

Jack Deeth · November 2015

Brilliant idea, Mike, thanks. That would be an ideal solution. Unfortunately, Online Express does not have those merge fields for the thankyou/receipt emails.

We *could*, however, set up an external process to watch for new OLX GA decs and send a GA confirmation statement to the donor. It wouldn't be as elegant as what you can achieve through NetCommunity though.

Robert Sharp 2 · December 2015

+1 this feature request for OLX. Its unclear how we demonstrate to HMRC cast iron proof of the date and time someone made a gift aid declaration.

Lorena Cela · December 2015

I have escalated this recently with my account manager who has been liaising directly with the person(s) responsible for working on the development of OLX. I hear that there are some communications happening between BB and HMRC to check and iron this out.

Fingers crossed, because, I have also been worried for some time about HMRC and its requirements vs. what OLX offers.

I have asked for some sort of written statement from Blackbaud to say that what OLX provides is acceptable - and also suggested tweaks that are needed within the OLX system to satisfy HMRC and also relieve our nerves!

We've held back claiming for a while because of it!

There isn't even currently a merge field option for confirmation emails/webpage message or receipts to show that the donor ticket GA and how much can be claimed.

Netcommunity offers this, but we are now no longer using it!

Watch this space - I will update once I hear back.

Christopher Armstrong · January 2016

Hello,

Thank you for raising this issue, since reviewing this blog we have discussed the issue with a HMRC investigator who has confirmed that Electronic Declarations made via Online Express and NetCommunity both meet the requirements of the HMRC.

For more information please refer to the Blackbaud Knowhow post - http://www.blackbaudknowhow.com/blackbaud-europe/10993.htm

Thanks

Christopher Armstrong

Are HMRC happy with Online Express' Gift Aid declarations?

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