Petition Change gift aid rules in relation to charity auctions

The current gift aid rules for charity auctions don't support the principals of encouraging donations to charity.

We ask the government to change the rules so that, provided the charity does not pay any money for the item which is being auctioned, all of the money that goes to the charity as a result of the bid should be eligible for gift aid.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/charities/gift_aid/rules/auctions.htm

The current rules are complicated, add burden to the charity in administration and penalise auctions of promises over commercial donations.

If a person offers a promise for auction they are donating time to the charity. The rules say this is not eligible for gift aid but for a commercial product gift aid is claimed on the overpayment. This fails to take into account that the labour part of the promise is zero and therefore the benefit value is far less than the commercially product.

Calculating benefit for gift aid, and buying benefit is unnecessarily complicated