Give as You Earn  – Payroll Giving

If your employer, company or personal pension provider runs a Payroll Giving scheme, you can donate straight from your wages or pension. This happens before tax is deducted from your income.

If you are a Higher Rate or Additional Rate taxpayer, you can increase your charitable donations by using Payroll Giving. This increases your donations by the amount of the tax you would have paid on the donation if you’d kept it as income – about 67% for Higher Rate taxpayers, or about 82% for Additional Rate taxpayers. If you are a Basic Rate taxpayer, then Payroll Giving would increase your donations by 25%, which is the same as a Gift Aid declaration. Your HR department can provide more details on this.

The same result can be achieved if you fill in a self assessment tax return and re-claim the difference between the tax recovered via Gift Aid and the tax the you have actually paid – however, this will delay the tax recovery until the end of the financial year, and we do not receive it directly.