Charities and Community Amateur Sports Clubs (CASCs) will be able to make repayment claims electronically from April, HMRC has announced.
The Charities Online service is set to make it easier for charities and CASCS to submit their Gift Aid repayment claims, claims for repayment of tax on other income and claims under the new Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme (GASDS), says the taxman.
The current R68(i) print and post repayment form is to be replaced by three options for making claims - online, through a charity's own database and a traditional paper form.
Submitting claims electronically will be quicker and more accurate, with built-in checks to alert the sender to errors before submission, says HMRC. It claims this will be the best option for those normally filing Gift Aid claims for fewer than 1,000 donors.
The system will electronically submit details for up to 1,000 Gift Aid donors or aggregated donations with each claim by attaching a spreadsheet to an online claim form. This form will have mandatory fields and will automatically check that the information has been entered in the correct format.
Those filing over 1,000 Gift Aid claims can file through their own database, although it can also be used to make smaller claims.
This option empowers users to send one claim per day directly from their own internal database, with details for up to 500,000 Gift Aid donors. Charities and CASCs wishing to use this system will either need to develop a compatible software package in-house or purchase a suitable package from a software provider.
And for those who do not have access to the internet, new paper repayment claim form, ChR1, will replace all existing R68 series claim forms.
Photocopies of the CHR1 and old R68 series forms will not be accepted because the new system will not be able to scan the information.
There will be no limit to the number of claims that can be submitted, and HMRC will accept up to 90 Gift Aid donor details with each individual claim.
Other changes include aggregated donations, which will see the current limit of £500 be extended with claimants able to combine individual Gift Aid donations of £20 or less, up to a total of £1,000 per entry.
And from April 2013, all donations for someone taking part in a sponsored event will be accepted as a single entry under the name of the participant. Only individual donations of £500 or more shown on individual sponsor sheets will need to be separated out and listed separately on the claim.
HMRC has vowed to release further details in February.