Ineligible GASDS donations usually arise due to a church or charity trying to use both parts of GASDS, ‘top-up’ and ‘Community Buildings’ simultaneously in the same tax year.


Some churches and charities were doing this, but since April 2017, HMRC has insisted that a charity chooses to use one part or the other, but not both.


Once any Community Buildings are set up on a charity’s account, Fund Filer helps users to stay compliant by omitting the default ‘General GASDS’ heading. This heading is only used for ‘top-up’ and is created by default with every new Fund Filer account.


In addition, Fund Filer warns about ineligible donations at the claiming stage.


This scenario is hopefully rare, but might occur for example if a charity began a tax year recording GASDS donations under the default ‘General GASDS’ heading, but then later switched to using the Community Buildings part of GASDS, finishing up with a mixture of the two in one claim.


Any ‘top-up’ monies (labelled General GASDS) are excluded if donations under the Community Buildings Scheme are also present in the proposed claim. See figure 1.





The warning panel also includes a button to view and then add the ineligible donations to a community building if wished. This can be done via a simple pull down menu alongside each erroneous donation record. See figure 2.





Note that Fund Filer will not check for past history in a particular tax year. If you start the year claiming under ‘top-up’ and then switch to Community Buildings in the same year, this wouldn’t be spotted unless there was a conflict within a particular claim. This could then result in a problem once your later claim reached HMRC as you would be seen to have claimed under both parts of the scheme in one tax year, although not necessarily under a single claim.


The moral of this?! Decide which part of GASDS you are claiming under before you start claiming in a particular tax year and stick to it. These you will avoid all the issues outlined above!



This section should be read in conjunction with our other articles: