Help centre / Giving & Gift Aid / Claim Gift Aid straight to HMRC
Claim Gift Aid straight to HMRC
Go to Giving, then Gift Aid claims. Connect HMRC Charities Online once with your Government Gateway details, then Prepare claim and Send to HMRC. You'll need your HMRC Gift Aid reference first. Small cash gifts of £30 or less are added under GASDS.
What you need first
- Your charity registered for Gift Aid with HMRC, and your HMRC Gift Aid reference (it looks like AB12345).
- Your charity's Government Gateway user ID and password for Charities Online.
- The name of the authorised official HMRC has on record.
If you haven't registered yet, do that on GOV.UK first. Until you connect, you can still prepare claims here, download the schedule as a spreadsheet, and file through HMRC's website yourself.
Send a claim
- Go to Giving, then Gift Aid claims.
- Select Connect HMRC and enter your Government Gateway user ID, password, Gift Aid reference, regulator, charity registration number and the authorised official's name. Your password is stored encrypted and never shown again. Leave Use HMRC's test service ticked while you practise; nothing real is filed in test mode.
- Check the Ready to claim from HMRC amount. A gift counts once it's marked eligible and the donor has an active declaration covering it.
- If any donations are listed as needing details, open each supporter and add the missing surname, house name or number, or postcode. HMRC rejects claims without them, so this check saves you a bounce.
- Select Prepare claim. This gathers every ready donation into a draft. Nothing is sent yet, and you can Discard a draft at any time to release the donations again.
- Select Send to HMRC.
- Select Check HMRC status after a few minutes. Accepted claims show their HMRC reference. If HMRC rejects a claim, it goes back to draft with HMRC's reason, so you can fix the details and send it again.
- When the money arrives in your bank, select Mark paid.
Small donations (GASDS)
The Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme lets you claim on small cash and contactless gifts of £30 or less without a declaration. CharityControl works out an estimate from your recorded donations and includes it in the claim. There are limits: up to £8,000 of small donations per tax year, and no more than ten times what you claimed in ordinary Gift Aid that year.
Prefer to file by hand?
Every claim has a Schedule CSV download in HMRC's column layout. Paste it into HMRC's schedule template, file on their website, then select Mark submitted here so your records match.