Photocopies of cheque donations

[hector]

Our RC diocese is insisting that we provide photocopies of any cheques from gift aid donors. They say HMRC will require this as part of the audit trail. I can find no evidence on the HMRC site that photocopies of cheques are needed. We are careful to record all payments, whether cash or cheques on a special form each week and also have evidence on the bank paying-in slips. Please can you confirm this is sufficient ?

[Ian_Clark]

Hector

To the best of my knowledge HMRC do not require photocopies of cheques, merely an adequate audit trail that ties (bank) gifts to specific donors and their GA declarations. If the paying-in books include the donor's name this should be sufficient. Other charities may annotate bank statements with donors names or references to assist auditing.

Whilst you bank the cheques in the parish, the Gift Aid claim is actually made by the RC diocese, and it is they who may be audited. So they may want photocopies for their internal purposes, or their general auditors (not HMRC auditors) may have suggested photocopies. But if you send a detailed schedule to your diocese with GA donors names, amounts and whether they have paid by cheque, I would have thought this was sufficient. But every diocese does things slightly differently, and so there may be good local reasons why they want photocopies. You may have to ask them for their explanation.

[Ian_Clark]

Hector

To the best of my knowledge HMRC do not require photocopies of cheques, merely an adequate audit trail that ties (bank) gifts to specific donors and their GA declarations. If the paying-in books include the donor's name this should be sufficient. Other charities may annotate bank statements with donors names or references to assist auditing.

Whilst you bank the cheques in the parish, the Gift Aid claim is actually made by the RC diocese, and it is they who may be audited. So they may want photocopies for their internal purposes, or their general auditors (not HMRC auditors) may have suggested photocopies. But if you send a detailed schedule to your diocese with GA donors names, amounts and whether they have paid by cheque, I would have thought this was sufficient. But every diocese does things slightly differently, and so there may be good local reasons why they want photocopies. You may have to ask them for their explanation.