What Gift Aid adds
Gift Aid lets a UK charity claim back the basic rate tax a donor has already paid, which adds 25p to every £1 they give. A £40 gift becomes £50. The donor pays nothing extra; they only need to confirm they pay enough UK tax.
The declaration on your form
Switch Gift Aid on and the form shows the amount it would add ("Boost your donation by £10.00 with Gift Aid") above an unticked box with HMRC's model declaration for multiple donations, word for word. One declaration covers this gift, future gifts and gifts in the past 4 years, so monthly donors are covered without being asked every month.
- Address as HMRC asks for it: a house name or number and a postcode. Donors outside the UK give their full address instead, and Isle of Man and Channel Islands donors are handled the way HMRC's guidance says.
- Kept as the donor gave it: the wording they saw, the amount, the charity name and the time are stored with the declaration. HMRC says a declaration retyped into a database does not count, so nothing is retyped.
- Only for real gifts: a declaration is saved once the payment completes, never for an abandoned checkout.
- Your words don't touch it: if you've changed "donation" to "gift" elsewhere on the form, the declaration and the name "Gift Aid" stay as HMRC wrote them.
Making the claim
Donor Merchant → Gift Aid lists every gift that is ready to claim, for any date range, with the total Gift Aid. From there:
- Download the claim file. Each line is already in HMRC's format: first name or initial, last name, house name or number, postcode, date as DD/MM/YY and the amount.
- Paste the lines into HMRC's schedule spreadsheet (values only) and upload it in Charities Online.
- Mark the gifts as claimed, so they never go on a second claim. A claim marked by mistake can be undone.
Claims use the gift itself, not any processing fee the donor chose to cover, and leave out anything refunded. If a gift is refunded after you've claimed on it, the screen lists the Gift Aid to report back to HMRC on your next claim.
Cancelling
Donors can cancel their declaration from the donor portal, and you can record a cancellation they make by phone or email. As HMRC's rules say, cancelling stops Gift Aid on gifts from that day; earlier gifts still qualify.
Gift Aid rules are HMRC's, not ours. Check HMRC's Gift Aid guidance for what qualifies, and the Gift Aid setup guide for the steps.