Gift Aid at FIRE

[JohnB]

After I FIREd last tax year, I carried on Gift Aiding as I thought I'd still be paying enough tax to cover it, but realise that in certain circumstances you can have quite a high income and not pay tax.

With the combination of Personal Allowance, Personal Savings Allowance, Dividend Allowance and Starting Rate for Savings, I think you can have scenarios like

£22.5k income comprised of £5k dividends, £17.5k interest (11.5k PA, 1k PSA, 5k DA 5k SRS)

Which you could get with a £120k index tracker and £200k p2p holding (and balls of steel for all that p2p)

My position isn't that extreme but I've realised I might be only paying £200 tax or so, which could easily be less than the Gift aid on English Heritage, visits to museums etc, so I've been busy cancelling my forms, as I assume the charities only claim after the end of the tax year.

Caveat Donor

[PinkDalek]

There was a recent thread on this issue at Taxes:

https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=7243

Incidentally, CGT can also be used to frank gift aided payments, where applicable. In addition, many charities do not wait 12 months to reclaim. They used to be able to do this quarterly or possibly more frequently.

[swill453]

Does anyone actually know if HMRC have ever chased anyone for wrongly asserting their donation was entitled to Gift Aid?

Not that I'm suggesting anyone should, but if HMRC were seriously going to actively reconcile Gift Aid payments with individual taxpayers, then surely they'd make it easy for themselves by asking for NI number.

The thought that someone in HMRC is transcribing handwritten Gift Aid forms, with at most name and address on them, into the computer system is far-fetched.

Between me stopping work and claiming State Pension, a period of 14 years, I know I won't be paying any tax, so I never claim Gift Aid.

Scott.

[JohnB]

Thanks for the thread ref. I just asked there what do people do with the SA gift aid box if they are confident their tax covers their contributions, and they don't require a HRT refund or top-up. Do people itemise, guess or omit the Gift aid information if it doesn't change the result?