As you may know, JustGiving automatically claims the Gift Aid on all the eligible donations made on the site.
We submit claims to HMRC every month who then process the claim and send the Gift Aid to us. This process usually takes 6-8 weeks. We then deduct the fees and we pay the funds directly to the charity’s bank account.
Our systems and processes were adjusted last year on short notice to accommodate the change to the basic rate of tax and the introduction of Transitional Relief. (If you’d like to find out how we did this then you can read about it here)
For the charities who use JustGiving the new Gift Aid rate and Transitional Relief has been claimed correctly by us for them.
However many charities have been experiencing difficulties in incorporating the new Gift Aid and Transitional Relief for their offline donations, and this has resulted in an increased number of incorrect Gift Aid claims being submitted to HMRC.
The knock on effect of this has been that HMRC have had to extend their turn around period for processing Gift Aid claims while they deal with the backlog caused by these incorrect claims. But with the extra training and technology upgrades they’ve been putting into place this is expected to only be a short term measure.
So, if your charity is experiencing a delay with a Gift Aid claim for donations made through JustGiving then please be reassured. The claim will have been submitted correctly, we are in regular contact with HMRC about the issue and we’ll make the payment through to you as soon as HMRC are able to process the claim.
