Giving more effectively and more easily!
by Michael Ling, O A B Accounting Officer and Guru

Gift Aid

Gift Aid is a scheme to enable tax effective giving by individuals to charities in the United Kingdom. It was originally introduced in 1990, and substantially revised in April 2000.

Gift Aid allows individuals who are subject to UK income tax to complete a simple, short declaration that they are a UK taxpayer. Any cash donations that the taxpayer makes to their favourite charity, (O A B of course), after making a declaration, are treated as being made after deduction of income tax at the basic rate, and the charity can reclaim the basic rate income tax paid on the gift from H M R C.

If you pay Income Tax or Capital Gains Tax, then by signing a gift-aid form we can claim money from the Customs and Revenue based on any donations or membership fees that you send to us – so long as the amount you pay in tax is at least equal to the amount we claim. For every £ that you give us, we can currently claim an extra 28p.

Therefore, when you pay your membership of £5 it would be worth £6.40 to us. Even with the change in the basic rate of tax next April, a £5 member payment would still make a very worthwhile £6.25 for us.

So if you are a taxpayer please complete the gift aid form on the next page and let us claim a further 28% (25% from next April) on top of each contribution we receive.

[ Download Donation & Membership Form.PDF Version ]

Standing Order
If you want to make regular payments to us, why not take advantage of a standing order with your bank? This can be used to make regular payments whether weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually. Not only does it save you having to remember when you last sent anything to us, it also saves you the hassle and cost of writing cheques and posting them to us. If you do wish to pay by standing order, please complete the standing order on the following page, but please remember to send this to OAB and NOT to your bank.

[ Download Standing Order Instruction .PDF Version ]