Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of gift aid contribution rates on levels of charitable giving.

Gift Aid enables charities to claim a basic rate top-up on eligible donations. HMRC does not hold information centrally on the proportion of Gift Aid contributions by donors’ marginal rates of Income Tax for the 2024–25 and 2025–26 financial years. This information would require linking donation data with individual taxpayer records and undertaking additional analysis, which could only be carried out at disproportionate cost due to the size and complexity of the data.

Gift Aid incentivises taxpayers to donate more to charity, as they can see their donations going further. Because of this, we estimate that charitable organisations benefit by significantly more than the £1.7bn Exchequer cost in 2025.