Can 'donations' to EAG be tax deductible?

By Lovkush 🔸 @ 2024-05-20T10:49 (+9)

I am attending EAG for the first time (in London) and I made a £400 'donation' as recommended for the registration. However, it looks like this is not tax deductible.

Am I correct that this is not tax deductible?
If it is tax deductible, let me know what I should do to correct things!
If it is not tax deductible, is there a way for it to become tax deductible? E.g. some way of donating to EA Infrastructure Funds, ear-marking it for EAG conferences.

As always, if this is explained somewhere else already, let me know. I tried searching but did not find anything.

Photo of jar of coins in preview image is by Josh Appel on Unsplash

Rasool @ 2024-05-22T08:46 (+10)

I'm disturbed by a couple of things in this thread:

@OllieBase is giving very confident tax advice, which I'm not sure is correct
- It seems to be contradicted by a later email exchange between the EAG team and Lovkush
In that email exchange, it turns out that we could choose the free ticket and then separately make a tax-deductible donation to CEA through GWWC
- Why isn't this more publicised? Every UK tax payer would benefit from this (or CEA themselves would benefit by being able to claim 25% extra)

Lovkush @ 2024-05-20T16:56 (+5)

For those interested, the question of whether EAG can qualify for 'Gift Aid' is answered on UK Government website:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/gift-aid-what-donations-charities-and-cascs-can-claim-on

"If any donor or person connected to the donor benefits significantly from their donation, it does not qualify for Gift Aid."

EDIT: I am (likely) wrong. EAG can qualify for 'Gift Aid'. See domdomegg's reply for why my comment is incorrect.

domdomegg @ 2024-05-22T19:15 (+5)

Note that because you can go to EAG for free by not paying, it is actually allowable for gift-aid. This is because there is no signficant benefit from the donation given that the same benefit can be had for free without significant other cost.

Source: Charity guidance on gift-aid section 3.43.7 (plus prior experience running Gift Aid-able events and consulting with lawyers + HMRC then)

OllieBase @ 2024-05-20T15:10 (+4)

Hi Lovkush, Ollie from the CEA events team here.

We are not claiming Gift Aid on the donations which relate to EAG London this year.

However, this is separate from your own personal tax reliefs, which you can claim on your donations in your personal tax return (and which does not depend on whether Effective Ventures, our parent organisation, claims Gift Aid).

AGB @ 2024-05-21T06:41 (+12)

How sure are you about this? The boxes on the UK Self Assessment Tax Return (link below, it’s on page 6) where I declare my donations ask for things like “Gift Aid Payments made in the year…”. So I wouldn’t include non-Gift-Aid payments there and I’m not sure where else they would go.

In general, the core tax concept for various reliefs in the UK is Adjusted Net Income. The page defining it (linked below) explicitly calls out Gift Aid donations as reducing it but not anything else.

I’d appreciate a link if I’m wrong about this.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6613fc8a213873b991031b88/SA100_2024.pdf

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/adjusted-net-income

OllieBase @ 2024-05-23T09:20 (+2)

Thanks for your comment AGB, and sorry I didn’t give enough detail initially. I’ve checked with relevant people internally, and our thoughts are below.

HMRC uses "Gift Aid" (in both the form and their Adjusted Net Income page) to mean that the donation was eligible for Gift Aid in the charity’s hands. We don't have to claim Gift Aid for the donation to be eligible (and HMRC does not expect donors to confirm this).

If you donated £400 for EAG London and you’re filling out the self-assessment tax return, you would add £400 to boxes 5 and 6 of the Charitable Giving section (as a “one off” donation, because EAG London is not a regular monthly donation). The level of tax relief you receive will depend on your own income levels through the year, and this isn’t something we can comment on.

We aren’t currently planning on claiming Gift Aid on the donations to EAG London to reduce administrative overhead, but we might possibly revisit that in future years. We will take another look at our website language, as we’ve had a few people ask about Gift Aid, and so we may not have been clear enough that our decision on whether or not to claim Gift Aid does not actually impact an individual donor’s tax filing position.

AGB @ 2024-05-23T09:44 (+11)

Thanks for clarifying. I agree that Gift Aid eligibility is the key question; HMRC does not expect me to have insight into the administration of every charity I donate to, and it’s not like they care if charities don’t take the ‘free’ money they are entitled to! In other words, whether CEA claims does not matter but whether it could claim does.

However, in order for the charity to be entitled a Gift Aid declaration must be completed:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/charities-detailed-guidance-notes/chapter-3-gift-aid#chapter-36-gift-aid-declarations

“Without this declaration, a donation from an individual will not qualify as a Gift Aid donation.”

I do not recall filling one in when I last paid for EAG - which was multiple years ago to be clear - and without that declaration it is not in fact a Gift Aid donation, in my non-professional opinion of course but it’s based on that link. So I did not feel comfortable claiming. Others’ mileage may vary.

I’m glad to hear you are reconsidering the website language.

OllieBase @ 2024-06-18T16:49 (+5)

Thanks for your comment.

We’ve mentioned elsewhere that we might revisit the decision not to claim Gift Aid after the event, and so we’re planning to send around Gift Aid Declaration forms to donors soon. We think this would be helpful so we can preserve the option of claiming Gift Aid on these donations in the future.

We think the HMRC guidance to individuals is not very clear, and thanks for your prompt to check this. We have looked into it, and consulted our external advisors and we do not think that it is a requirement of personal tax relief that the individual donor signs a Gift Aid Declaration form. However, as HMRC’s own guidance isn’t consistently clear on this, and as we’d like to keep the option of claiming the Gift Aid afterwards, we’d like to send around GAD forms and will be in touch with donors to do this.

This thread has prompted us to pay closer attention here, so thank you (everyone in this thread) for flagging it!

Lovkush @ 2024-06-19T07:30 (+3)

Thanks for taking time to think about this and act on it! I have not interacted with EA community much, but things like this show why it is great place to be! :)

OllieBase @ 2024-05-24T17:28 (+2)

Thanks AGB (and Rasool below),

I'm looking into this. Again, it seems our language here hasn't been clear enough and I want to make sure I'm as clear as possible when I respond.

Rasool @ 2024-05-24T09:58 (+1)

I also don't feel comfortable claiming this as a Gift Aid eligible 'donation'

I can't remember the wording on the registration page, but I think it was phrased around purchasing a ticket, rather than making a donation
- And as you said, there wasn't any mention of Gift Aid declarations (regardless of whether CEA was going to do anything with that)
Even the confirmation email I got said 'Date of purchase' (rather than 'Date of donation' or similar)
While it is true that you could have gotten a free ticket meaning that there was no extra benefit in paying (pointed out by domdomegg here)
- I'm not sure how it works given that there was an application process and your application could be rejected
- More importantly, HMRC seem to be wise to the idea of treating all ticket purchases as donations, in 3.43.6 here it states:

A charity can charge what it likes for a ticket to attend its event. However, it should not put the charity’s funds at risk and, therefore, should set the ticket price at a level to at least recover its costs.

And I'm pretty sure the wording on the registration page was something like "£400 lets us recoup the cost from running the event" or similar.

So I don't think HMRC would see these payments as 'monies received as fundraising during an event that the charity put on' rather than 'ticket price for an event' (which is not an eligible donation)

OllieBase @ 2024-06-18T16:48 (+4)

Thanks for your comment, Rasool.

We’re happy to provide as much info as we can here but I just want to make clear that, ultimately, it’s your call about whether you claim tax relief on this donation.

We do think we haven’t been sufficiently clear about how donations to EA Global work and we’ll be revisiting this language in due course to make things clearer. Addressing a few other points:

Our payment platform is set up to receive payments, and to generate receipts. A purchase receipt does not change the fact that this was a donation to a charity.
Re: whether tickets recoup costs: EA Global conferences cost >£1k per person per event (though that’s coming down) so the suggested donation amount wouldn’t cover the costs of one attendee. Our goal isn’t to maximise donations and break even, so while we’re very grateful for all donations, we want to ensure the event is accessible to a wide range of people.
Re: HMRC rules: As above, our goal isn’t to cover our costs through ticket sales—and we view giving free tickets as part of our wider charitable purposes—so this part of the HMRC guidance doesn’t apply to us.
RE: applications: Filtering all applications and then only inviting selected people to register for a free event is allowed within HMRC rules—provided the event is open to a sufficiently wide section of the public, it is fine to require attendees to meet some standards (e.g. demonstrating a genuine interest in the topics at the conference, before they are accepted and then invited to donate). CEA only asks people to make a donation once they have been accepted to attend the event.

Again, thanks so much for your comments here.

Rasool @ 2024-05-24T09:18 (+1)

Is there much administrative overhead to claim Gift Aid?

If 500(?) people are paying £400 (for a total of £200,000), you can claim £50,000 from the government which seems like it should be worthwhile

And it's not too late to collect people's Gift Aid declarations (section 3.6.3 here)

Lovkush @ 2024-05-20T16:53 (+1)

Thanks Ollie. I didn't know that personal tax relief was separate from Gift Aid. Useful information!

Jason @ 2024-05-20T13:42 (+3)

Are you asking for UK, US, or elsewhere?

Lovkush @ 2024-05-20T16:52 (+1)

I am personally asking for the UK, but I assume answers for other regions will be useful for other people.

Lovkush @ 2024-05-21T17:34 (+2)

Separate to this post, I emailed the EAG team and they replied with this option: "You could choose a free ticket and donate here through Giving What We Can, which is eligible for gift aid."

Unfortunately I already registered, but will do this in future.