HMRC has published details of charity tax relief statistics in 2020-21. The collection of tax statistics (summarised below) can be found here. A commentary by HMRC can be found here.

Charity Tax Group Chair, Richard Bray, commented:

“Not surprisingly given the impact of the pandemic Gift Aid paid to charities in the year to 5 April 2021 has declined. But the scale of that decline is relatively marginal and over all that is good news for the charity sector.  It could have been so much worse.  The relative resilience of the level of clams paid is likely to have reflected a number of factors including the phasing of when donations are received and when Gift Aid claims are paid, charities making claims earlier to secure much needed cashflow and HMRC paying claims more promptly. So, there is an element of guess work here. These factors may also mean that Gift Aid paid in the current year may be subject to decline as well.”

Overview

(NB figures are rounded to the nearest £10m  which can cause some issues when tallying up individual amounts).

• Total tax relief for charities and donors was down £130m to £5.69bn (from £5.82bn)
• Total tax relief for charities was down by £130m to £3.95bn (from £4.08bn)
• Total Gift Aid claimed in 2020-21 was down by £20m to £1.38bn (from £1.4bn)
  • The total number of charities claiming Gift Aid was down by 1880 to 69750. This is down from a high of 73,210 charities claiming Gift Aid in 2018/19.
  • £670m was paid to charities claiming more than £1m in total (this represented 160 charities in total, the same as the previous year)
  • Total claims under £5k amounted to £70m (this represented almost 50,000 charities)
  • Donations net of basic rate income tax were £5.52bn
• GASDS was down £10m to £30m (from £40m)
• Non-domestic rates relief (whole of UK) was up by £20m to £2.41bn (from £2.39bn)
• SDLT relief for charities was down £130m to £150m (from £290m)
• Total tax relief for donors was up £10m to £1.7bn (from £1.70bn) [NB the figures in the table don’t quite tally with this, but this may be an error or caused by rounding]
• IHT relief was up £40m to £1.04bn (from £1.0bn)
• Payroll giving was the same at £40m
• Gifts of shares and property was down £40m to £90m (from £130m)
• Gift Aid higher rate relief was down £10m to £530m (from £540m)

Statistics from 2019-20 can be found here.