CHARITABLE STATUS

[Mike Truran]

This from the EBU website home page:


Charitable status for bridge club

The Charity Commission has recently made the ground-breaking decision to award charitable status to a bridge club in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. The Charity Commission stated that: “sport has often been used to advance charitable aims but, following a change in the law introduced by the Charities Act 2006, it is now charitable to advance amateur sports or games, which promote health by involving physical or mental skill or exertion.”

* Read our press release
* Hitchin Bridge Club
* Charity Commission

[Michele Clack]

Does this mean that the ECF, and the 4NCL for that matter, could re-constitute itself as a charitable trust and cut its VAT cost? As a charity donations could be gift-aided to reclaim income tax as well. Any Charitable Status experts out there?

[Roger de Coverly]

Does this mean that the ECF, and the 4NCL for that matter, could re-constitute itself as a charitable trust and cut its VAT cost?

Payments to professional players for playing are not allowed as part of charitable status. So the ECF would have to hive off the British Championships and the International teams into a separate body. With the International Teams and sometimes the British Championships having to be financed by the "charitable" body, I'm not sure that works.

The same issue of paying players to pay could apply in the 4NCL as well, The 4NCL is structured as a commercial organisation so there's no member involvement in its governance. Presumably the VAT paid by the 4NCL isn't of a sufficient amount to warrant restructuring to try to save it. Total turnover might be below the £ 70,000 mark anyway.

British chess (because VAT applies to Scotland, Wales and NI as well) is very much splintered into smaller organisations already. This is for historic reasons as much as tax efficiency. So scope for saving VAT is limited because most organisations are below the VAT threshold.

[Andrew Farthing]

Does this mean that the ECF, and the 4NCL for that matter, could re-constitute itself as a charitable trust and cut its VAT cost? As a charity donations could be gift-aided to reclaim income tax as well. Any Charitable Status experts out there?

Roger's covered a lot of what I intended to post in response to this.

The possibility of the ECF's becoming a charity has been on our minds for years, but until recently a lack of movement at the Charity Commission end seems to have prevented progress. Now, simultaneously with the decision on the bridge club, a consultation paper has been issued intended to explore whether organisations which encourage amateur involvement in mental and physical activities (bridge and chess are specifically mentioned) could be given charitable status.

I am involved in discussions with a number of other interested parties on a response to the consultation paper.

As Roger says, it would be unrealistic to expect that all of the ECF's activities would fit a definition of "charitable", but a significant part potentially could.

Part of the challenge here is timing. The wheels may grind slowly on this issue, while we need to be making decisions about future ECF funding now.

[Michele Clack]

That sounds promising Andrew. It sounds like it might well be practicable to hive off the junior section into a charity and try to get them more money. If there was a place on rhe ECF membership form to make a donation to a junior section, I for one would be tempted.