Interesting that just as we hit bonus season Henderson Asset Management reminds us of gift aid – who can he be thinking of?
Henderson say:
"True charity is the desire to be useful to others without thought of recompense": so said Emanuel Swedenborg. In England, the easiest way of achieving this is generally to put your hand in your pocket and make a donation to one of the 180,000 charities registered with the Charity Commission, and let them be useful on your behalf. And this we do in great numbers, second only to the US in 2006 in terms of giving as a proportion of gross domestic product. However, a recent report shows that charities are missing out on significant further amounts that would be available from the government, if only more people ticked the Gift Aid box.
Gift Aid was set up in 1990 to enable charities to easily reclaim the basic rate of tax on personal donations, and although this can be administratively tricky when completed outside the popular giving websites, effectively only requires the donor to tick a box and provide an address. Yet, in 2009/2010, 20 years later, only 40% of donors did so, up just 1% from the previous year. Whether this is because of concerns over data protection, a lack of understanding of the scheme, or other reasons is unclear. But given that it is estimated that up to £750m of unclaimed Gift Aid is lost for the charity sector each year, it seems a missed opportunity to not tick the box.
By the way investing ethically doesn't pay bonuses
