Donations: Tax Information

Donating to our fundraising campaign may bring you tax benefits if you are a higher-rate taxpayer and choose to gift-aid your donation. This is because in most cases you will be able to claim back the difference between the tax you have paid on the donation and what we have claimed back through the Gift Aid Scheme. So for example, if you pay tax at 40% and elected to make us a donation of  £5,000, we would actually end up with a gift worth £6,250 (as the Gift Aid Scheme allows us to claim a further 25 pence for every £1 you donate) and you would be able to claim back an extra £1,250 through your self-assessment form. If you made a gift of £25,000, then the benefit to us both would be even greater, because in this instance we would receive a total payment of £31,250 and you would be able to claim back an additional £6,250.

When considering the size of the donation you would like to make, we invite you to have a look at the table below which shows, for illustration purposes only, how much a gift to the school of sums ranging between £4,000 to £100,000 might cost – taking account of the amount we can claim back from the government (and the amount you can reclaim or retain in tax) if you choose to gift aid your donation.

Donating to us through a limited company may also bring you tax benefits. For example, a monetary donation will usually result in you having to pay less corporation tax as you can deduct the value of your donation from your total business profits before you pay tax. In addition, if you were to pledge to gift us equipment for use in a capital building project then you will usually be entitled to retain the full capital allowance on the cost of that equipment. Likewise, if you pledge to provide us with trading stock, then you will usually be entitled to retain tax relief on the cost of the stock and to reclaim the VAT.

If your company chooses to sponsor a building, event or initiative with us, then you should be able to deduct those sponsorship payments from your business profits before you pay tax by treating them as a business expense.