Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

you're far too clever for me george!

however, my dinosaur brain tells me that the donor merely pays less tax than he would have done, but for sure no one else has had his hand in the till or suffered ..... the taxpayer (aka HMRC) does not fork out at all; the exchequer is just a neutral conduit for the transaction

of course, as far as i can see, if the donor does not sign up for "gift aid", then the donor saves full tax on the whole amount

A patronising remark, none the less here is another more accurate example.

You earn £125 and £25 tax is deducted from this at the basic rate of 20%. This leaves you with £100. You then donate the £100 to charity through Gift Aid.

The charity can claim an extra £25 (the tax you paid at basic rate) from the government to make your total donation £125.

Higher rate taxpayers

If you pay tax at the higher rate of 40% or above, you can claim back the difference between the higher and basic rate on the value of your donation:

Example

You donate £100 to charity through Gift Aid - they claim 20% to make your donation £125. You pay 45% tax so you can personally claim back £31.25 (£125 x 25%).
2517

2517GEORGE....re Milli sacking Balls.

Lets not forget George that Alan Johnson was Millis nos 1 chancellor when he took over.

To sack him now wouldnt look very good.

I do admit balls comes over as a a bit of a rough street fighter in the same vein as John Prescott, but their is no doubt in my mind that hes a very inteligent economist who called the last couple of years spot on and pointed out we didnt need to as a country go through all this austerity that has now left living standards floundering.

sticky - you are/were an accountant ...... re the above on charitable donations, is the exchequer (other taxpayers) out of pocket?

I asked the question in light of Ed Balls disloyalty to Ed Milliband re the leaked emails.
He didn't call it right, he was completely wrong.
2517

Under the old system, you gave to charity and claimed back the whole of the tax on it. This has been the case for many years in most countries.

The difference now is that the basic tax element can be given to a charity as part of the transaction.

The exchequer is only out to the point that claiming tax relief on charity causes decreases in the tax revenue they receive, but that has always been the case with charity donations.

so i am correct in saying that no one is actually out of pocket ..... the worst that can be said is that the exchequer receives (a bit) less

Labour ex minister with his nose in the trough.

18 November

Former Rotherham MP Denis MacShane today pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to making bogus expenses claims of nearly £13,000

The ex-Labour minister admitted false accounting by putting in fake receipts for £12,900 of “research and translation” services.

He used the money to fund trips to Europe, including to judge a literary competition in Paris.

Asked to enter a plea to the charge in a hearing at the Old Bailey, MacShane replied: “Guilty.”

Sentencing was adjourned until December 19, and he was granted unconditional bail

The 65-year-old stood down as Labour MP for Rotherham last year.

he can join all the others from all parties

cynic you are incorrect you seem to have forgotten in my original post I stated the wealthy donor (inferred rate 45%) does not pay tax, so no tax had been paid by the donor on the gift to the charity, but he is still able to reclaim 25% of that gift, so the exchequer has not only forgone the taxed income (gone to charity) but has had to pay the donor the difference between higher and basic rate income tax, and this difference has been paid by the taxpayer.
ps I bet Fred thinks it's christmas.
2517

That is a strange story as HMRC state quite clearly that tax can only be reclaimed against tax previously paid.

This from the HMRC website

The Gift Aid scheme is for gifts of money by individuals who pay UK tax. Gift Aid donations are regarded as having basic rate tax deducted by the donor. Charities or CASCs take your donation - which is money you've already paid tax on - and reclaim the basic rate tax from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) on its 'gross' equivalent - the amount before basic rate tax was deducted.

H so if a wealthy donor pays no tax or very little tax he is unable to reclaim tax over and above what he has actually paid in tax.
2517

Goldfinger

For F##k sake sort this tax dispute out between george and cynic

The HMRC web site makes it quite clear

Making sure you’ve paid enough tax to use Gift Aid

You can use Gift Aid if the amount of Income Tax and/or Capital Gains Tax you’ve paid for the tax year in which you make your donation is at least equal to the amount of basic rate tax the charity or CASC and any other charities or CASCs you donate to will reclaim on your gift. A tax year runs from 6 April one year to 5 April the next. If you make a number of Gift Aid donations, you will need to consider the tax you’ve paid on each donation on an accumulative basis. If you don’t pay enough tax you will need to pay any shortfall in tax to HMRC.

How to check if you’ve paid enough tax

To work out if you’ve paid enough tax to cover your donations, divide the donation value by four. For example, if you give £100 in a particular tax year you will need to have paid £25 tax over that period. (£100/4 = £25). (Note that this calculation is based on the basic rate tax of 20 per cent)

george - i am not an accountant and seemingly you are not either ..... suggest an accountant answers the question

btw, don't forget that £100 nett to a higher tax payer = near enough £185 gross (ie before tax)

Paul Sykes: 'I want to set Britain free from the EU'

Paul Sykes is on a crusade to get a referendum on Britain’s membership and to restore our borders – and he’s putting his millions where his mouth is, he tells Philip Johnston


Paul Sykes at his Yorkshire home in the shadow of Fountains Abbey; he is financing the Ukip advert below. 'I am not in party politics,’ he says. 'I am in freedom fighting’



By Philip Johnston

10:02PM GMT 17 Nov 2013


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/10455937/Paul-Sykes-I-want-to-set-Britain-free-from-the-EU.html


Paul Sykes is David Cameron’s worst nightmare: a Ukip supporter with a pile of cash, and ready to spend it. By his own reckoning, this 70-year-old Yorkshire businessman has donated around £6 million to campaigns designed to keep Britain from the clutches of Europe.


Now, after a lengthy period avoiding the political limelight, he is again about to dig deep into his own pocket to finance one more effort to sever the UK’s 40-year tie-up with the Continent. In the past, this straight-talking self-made millionaire has helped fund Euro-sceptic Tory MPs – and was, for 27 years, even a party member. But the beneficiaries of his largesse this time will be Ukip – and his aim is to help Nigel Farage’s party top the poll in next year’s European elections. If that happens, Sykes hopes that all the major parties will then commit to a referendum on the UK’s future in Europe.


“There is only one political party at present that says it wants to be out of the EU, and there is only one political party that would deliver it – and that is Ukip,” he said. “It is the only game in town. I am certainly not wasting my time, energy and money on any of the others.”


We are speaking in the drawing room of his beautiful Gothic-style home in the shadow of Fountains Abbey, near Ripon, set in a few hundred acres of prime North Yorkshire countryside. Sykes’s story is a classic of its kind: the son of a miner, he left school with no qualifications to become a tyre-fitter. He started dealing in car parts before branching out to sell second-hand buses and lorries to the Far East. In the early 1960s, when the Beatles were taking home £1,000 a week, he was earning three times as much and driving a Rolls-Royce.


He later invested in shopping centres, including the Meadowhall, near Sheffield, which sold for more than £1 billion, netting Sykes £280 million. In 2000, he created the Planet Online internet provider and, foreseeing the 2008 financial crisis, got out of commercial property before the crash. By 2010, he was ranked the 26th wealthiest person in Britain, worth about £650 million. Famously, he has said he will not leave his children any money, beyond helping them buy a house, so that they learn how to make their own way in life.

he seems to contradict himself, or the report helps him to do so

at the beginning is the statement "Paul Sykes is on a crusade to get a referendum on Britain’s membership" with which i would have no argument at all, but elsewhere, he seems to say he doesn't want a referendum at all, but for uk to pull out from eu, end of (with which i do not agree)

His support of UKIP won't get him a referendum.

Interestingly, he was expelled from the Conservative party in 2001.

Well if he is really prepared to put his hand in his pocket, it's very good news for ukip.