Selecting GiftAid when I don’t pay tax

[JurassicPark101]

Will I get into trouble for this?

It’s not something I do as a matter of course but I’ve been away with my dc for the last week and pretty much all the days out we’ve done you’ve had to book online. We went to 2 zoos/ animal farm type places both of which are run as charities. When you buy the ticket online it costs say £40 if you can GiftAid it or £45 if you can’t. Both times there was an option to pay the £40 if you can’t GiftAid but still want to pay the lower price (who wouldn’t?) but you have to call a phone line that is never answered or email the generic customer services email address. As both places had pretty limited tickets for the days we wanted, having got no reply from the phone or email after a couple of hours, I just selected the GiftAid price and booked it that way.

I wasn’t asked for my home address, DOB or anything other than an email address so I’m not sure how they’d link it to my tax payments anyway? Has anyone else done this? Am I going to be in loads of trouble or does no one really care? I’m not actually divorced from my ex husband yet, he does pay tax so I could always say I just put my name instead of his when I booked it or something, possibly?

You will get billed for the tax by HMRC if they are audited. And if HMRC spot you have done it once they will check their records to see if you have done it elsewhere. If you fill in a self assessment you have to record charity donations and whether you claimed gift aid. If you are not honest in your tax return you can be fined and prosecuted

@JurassicPark101

The ticket price is a “donation” but obviously they don’t let you in unless you have a ticket. So I could pay for an adult and 2 kids for £40 if it was a Gift Aid donation ticket or £45 if it was a non-Gift Aid donation ticket. The tickets were pretty limited when I booked them so couldn’t sit around waiting for someone to contact me back in order to pay the £40 non-Gift Aid price.

I know that some are saying “just pay the extra” but why should non-tax payers who are almost always incredibly low income have to pay more than those that aren’t? Why not just have the same price for everyone?

It should be the other way around though. The gift aid price should be 10% higher. Sounds like the venue have something wrong.

I could do gift aid but don't - the money goes in tax, as far as I'm aware and that could be seen as helping everyone in the uK.

HMRC can chase you

I checked on Chester Zoo website. An adult advance ticket is £26.36. A Gift Aid ticket includes 10% donation making it £29

@HollyGrail what about small charities, gift aid can make a big difference to them

Ah thanks for explaining wrt to my question. The place I looked at has a £2 higher price as a gift aid entrance. So it's the 'donation' of £2 on top of the admission fee that means they can claim the gift aid then.

I have paid my tax for this year but won't be due to pay any more now, I'll have to look carefully at what I'm ticking in future I think and I wouldn't have looked if it hadn't have been for this thread! Or I'll just get DP to do it as he will definitely be ok for it.

I didn’t click anything to declare that I was paying tax other than selecting to pay the Gift Aid donation price. The only time I put in my address was at the payment state which was through SagePay. The Zoo won’t be able to access my address information from that

I’d never heard of gift aid fraud until today 😮 And people getting billed!! Crazy. Seriously OP, you should have just paid the correct amount and sucked it up. I’m sure in your entire life you’ve had times where someone’s bought you a free coffee/given you a parking ticket etc. Basically, you win some, you lose some 🤷‍♀️

@HollyGrail totally your prerogative of course - there are definitely some people who won't do Gift Aid for this very reason.

I agree with the PP who thought that the attraction has probably misunderstood the Gift Aid rules and the amounts should be the other way round. OP - would you be comfortable naming them, or adding a link?

I haven’t worked int he charity’s sectors for a while, but this kind of thing definitely used to be illegal.

The charity shouldn’t offer a direct benefit above a certain proportion of the value of the donation.

With admissions, they can be a benefit for a donation but only if the donation is at least 10% higher than the normal admission cost.

I think someone somewhere has gotten this very muddled up. The charity should!’t be charging less for Gift Aided admissions, it should be charging more.

It's so long since I've been anywhere that I'd forgotten that gift aid was more expensive than the usual ticket price. I wondering what charity the op paid for now.

I donated to a charity and the Gift Aid was ticked as default, and I did not realise it (or even what it meant). I did not pay any income that year I did not know what became of that after.

I blame the charity though

I’d rather not name until I’ve at least had a reply to my email asking similar. It’s not clear at all that there’s a GiftAid price or a non-GiftAid price unless you actually read the terms and conditions (I do because I’m like that). If you click that you don’t agree to the terms and conditions it then comes up with the non-Gift Aid price and the number to call if you want it at the cheaper rate. It’s pretty hidden away which can’t be accidental. It’s only a smallish place though (sort of an independent zoo/ farm place) so I’m sure they need all the money they can get.

I will be caught this year on my charity donations as I am over paying my pension to get down to the income tax starting point (saves ni) so will probably need to pay extra back for gift aid claimed.

Or I just don't pay into my pension in March to give it a buffer.

I ticked gift aid at a time when I didn't earn enough to pay tax. I got a letter from the Taxman saying I had to pay the amount the charity had claimed in respect of my payment.

I agree with PhoenixFreesias: either the OP has got muddled or the charity has, or they’re trying to pull a fast one and have made a serious error. Gift Aid is only available on gifts - the clue is in the name - so in order to claim it on money for which the donor has received a benefit such as admission you have to charge them extra. Charging non-tax payers and gift aid refuseniks a higher rate would be both unethical and illegal.