The Small Charitable Donations and Childcare Payments Act 2017 is now enacted. The provisions will be effective from 6 April 2017.

The Act makes a number of amendments to the legislation which underpins the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme (GASDS), introduced in April 2013. The purpose of these changes is to simplify the scheme and extend access to smaller and newer charities.

The Act:

• completely removes the two-year eligibility rule and the Gift Aid history requirement (two-in-four rule) to allow more smaller and newer charities to benefit sooner
• ensures the scheme continues to reflect the realities of modern fundraising by allowing contactless donations to be eligible
• provides that charities – or a group of charities – may claim under the main allowance or under the community buildings allowance, but not both (which means that where there are connected charities it will no longer be possible for one of them to claim under the main allowance and another to claim under the community buildings provisions)
• will provide that a charity with more than one community building may claim top-up payments in respect of small donations of more than £8,000 in a tax year, provided that all of them qualify as part of a community building amount in accordance with s 6 of the 2012 Act
• reforms the community buildings rules to allow donations received outside of the community building but within the same local authority area to qualify – allowing more charities to benefit from the important work they carry out in their local communities.