I hope everyone has heard of Gift Aid by now. This is a scheme that enables registered charities throughout the UK to recover income tax on donations that are made to it by UK taxpayers. The benefit to charities is that they can collect from HMRC an additional 25% of any donations it receives. In the case of the Beaumont Society that would mean our annual income could be boosted by some £4,500 to £5,000 if every member was a UK taxpayer.

However, there is a big but - we need to have in our possession a Gift Aid Declaration from each member who agrees to Gift Aid their subscription. Since taking over as treasurer I have been investigating what has happened to our Gift Aid claims over the last few years. It seems that our last claim was made in early 2015, so I have a lot of catching up to do. I have logged all the Gift Aid Declarations (GADs) that I have in readiness to put in some claims. Unfortunately, although we have well over 700 active members I only have GADs from 146 of those. I have another 158 from lapsed members. What we also have is a record on our members' database that shows those people who, when they applied for membership, ticked the box on the application form which says you agree to the Society reclaiming the tax on your subscription. That accounts for another 250 members - these are mostly people who are paying via PayPal.

A bit of simple arithmetic will tell you that there must be more than 300 members for whom we cannot recover tax on their subscription. So the question I would ask is simply, “Why?” Well, there are some people who don’t pay tax in the UK - maybe they don’t have sufficient income to reach to tax threshold, they might live abroad (we do have a number of members from outside the UK). But that will be a very small proportion of those 300+. The reality is that we have many members who have, for whatever reason, not ticked a Gift Aid box on their application form or have not sent in a GAD.

So, my request to ALL members is to consider whether, assuming you are a UK taxpayer, you are willing to authorise Beaumont Society to reclaim the tax on your annual subscription and other donations to the charity. If you are (and I really do hope you all are - there is absolutely no cost to you as an individual - indeed, if you are fortunate to earn enough to be a higher rate taxpayer then by declaring charitable donations on a tax return or by letter to HMRC it will actually save you 20% tax on the gross amount of your subscription/donation) then I would ask you to fill in a GAD and send it to the Society. By doing so you will not only enable us to reclaim tax in the future but also, potentially, to reclaim it for up to 4 previous years.

For the 146 active members whose GADs we already have the only requirement is to ensure that we have your current address and that we also have the name by which you are known at HMRC.

Any information that a member completes on their GAD will be used only in connection with reclaiming tax and will not be disclosed to any other third party. The record will be retained for a maximum of 6 years after a member is removed from the membership database. If your membership lapses for a period and you choose to rejoin then a new GAD should be completed. We would also ask you to send in a new GAD if you change either your address or the name by which you are known to HMRC. If you are in a situation where you no longer pay tax then you should also notify us to prevent us having problems when we submit an incorrect claim in respect of tax paid by you.

You should find a blank GAD here: BS Charity Gift Aid Declaration

If you download the form and fill it in (it does not require a signature) and return to either the Society’s postal address (The Beaumont Society, 27 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3XX) or to treasurer@beaumont.society.org.uk we would be delighted.

Michelle Devon, Treasurer