How a lodge takes a Gift Aid declaration (and still files the year)

The Treasurer should be able to take a valid Gift Aid declaration once, store it against the named donor, apply it to this year's eligible gifts, count unnamed cash on the night it was given, and leave a file that the next Treasurer can open without reconstructing the year from memory.

Eligible, for Gift Aid, means a genuine charitable gift from a UK taxpayer who has made a valid declaration. It does not mean a membership fee. If the lodge has already decided that part of the annual subscription is a donation, that charitable portion can sit on the same declaration as later named gifts. Unnamed cash in a tin is a different HMRC scheme and needs its own night-by-night count. Those distinctions have to be written down when the money arrives, because they cannot be invented honestly when the pack is due.

HMRC's Gift Aid scheme lets a UK charity reclaim 25 pence for every £1 given by a UK taxpayer who has made a valid declaration. That is public HMRC practice. It is not a lodge custom, and this page will not invent a Provincial by-law about it.

The declaration is a HMRC document. GOV.UK tells charities that it must identify the charity, the donor's full name, the donor's full home address including a postal code, a description of the gift or gifts, and that the donor agrees Gift Aid should be claimed. It should also state that the donor has paid the same amount or more in Income Tax or Capital Gains Tax in that tax year. A tick that says "UK taxpayer" with no address and no charity name is not a record HMRC would recognise if they asked to see the file.

HMRC publishes example declaration forms. A lodge can use those examples, or another form that meets the same published requirements. This page will not write the wording for you, and it will not invent a UGLE template. Use what HMRC already publishes, adapted to the charity that will actually file the claim.

The document can cover a single gift, or gifts over a period, depending on how it is completed. The Treasurer needs to be able to read that choice later, when someone asks whether last November's named donation is covered. If the paper does not answer that question, it cannot support the line in the pack.

A declaration does not turn the whole annual subscription into Gift Aid. A membership fee is not automatically a gift. Gift Aid applies to the charitable portion only, and only if the lodge has already decided that a split exists.

The split is a lodge decision. It should be written where a successor can find it, then applied on every paid row of the dues run. The declaration answers a different question: whether this named donor is a UK taxpayer who has agreed Gift Aid on gifts to this charity. Both answers have to be yes before a dues line belongs in the Gift Aid pack. If the Treasurer has a declaration but no split, or a split but no declaration, that row should stay out of the claim.

This page will not tell you the lawful percentage for your lodge. Neighbouring lodges may split differently, and copying them without looking at your own resolution and charity status does not create a record you can defend. The dues-split job has its own note on this site. The work on this page is the document that sits on the donor, and the way it meets the paid charitable portion.

The usual failure is timing rather than wording. Officers wait until the claim pack is due, then hunt for a signature that was never taken, or treat a memory of a conversation as a declaration. HMRC's published scheme needs the document itself, not a recollection that someone would have been happy to complete one.

Ask for the declaration when the brother joins, at the start of the lodge year, or when a named gift is first given. Confirm that it identifies the donor and the charity that will file. Store it against that person on the same day. If it is left in a pile to scan later, it is the same class of problem as a 2019 folder: a document that exists somewhere and cannot be matched to this year's gifts.

When a brother has not declared, the Treasurer should not invent a tick because the rest of the dues run looks clean. Ask for the declaration, or leave that gift out of the pack. A lodge that files a smaller year on documents it can show is in a better position than a lodge that pads a pack with names it cannot support.

If a declaration is cancelled, or a donor's tax position changes, the lodge has to stop applying it. GOV.UK expects donors to tell the charity if they want to cancel, if their name or address changes, or if they no longer pay enough tax. The Treasurer needs a place those updates land, so a cancelled paper is not still generating lines in the following year.

A valid declaration that nobody can find is the same as no declaration for the purpose of filing. The usual hiding places are a paper file from an earlier Treasurer, a scan in a Secretary inbox, a shared drive named after last year's Master, or a Charity Steward laptop that went home after installation.

A new Treasurer, arriving in September, should be able to open a named member and see the declaration, the date it was taken, and whether it still applies. He should not have to telephone the previous Secretary, search an inbox, or reconstruct the year from minutes. Minutes are a lodge record of business. They are not a Gift Aid evidence file, and this page will not ask you to put private lodge business into a tax pack.

Keep the declarations for the period HMRC requires. GOV.UK currently tells charities to keep a record of declarations for six years after the most recent donation you claimed Gift Aid on. Follow HMRC if that published period changes for your charity. Keep the list of gifts that the declarations supported in the same place, so the successor is not matching two drifting files in the spring.

Access should be limited to the officers who need it. The Treasurer and Charity Steward need the file. The whole committee does not need a folder of home addresses forwarded on a thread. That is ordinary data care for a charity holding addresses, not a Craft rule.

A declaration sitting in a folder does no work until it meets a paid gift. On the dues run that means three things at once: the brother paid, the lodge had already decided the charitable portion of the subscription, and a valid declaration is on file for that named donor. Only then does Gift Aid belong on that row.

The Treasurer should be able to open two members who paid the same amount, show a declaration on one and none on the other, and see Gift Aid only on the first member's charitable portion. If the process cannot show that difference, the lodge will either under-claim or invent a claim.

Waivers, leavers, and late payers have to stay visible on the same list. A remitted subscription was not given, so there is no gift to attach to the declaration. A leaver who paid part of the year did not give a full-year gift. A late payer belongs in the year the money arrived. The declaration does not change those facts. It only answers whether the gift that did arrive can carry Gift Aid.

Instalments make a missing match more expensive to repair. A brother paying quarterly still needs the same declaration on each charitable slice, or a lasting declaration that already covers those gifts. Choose the method the document actually supports, and do not change the method in March because the pack is due.

Festive-board alms and other named donations fail in the same way as dues. A brother hands over a labelled envelope, or gives by card under his name, and someone later treats the Chest form, or a dinner total, as if it were his lodge declaration. A destination for charitable money is not the same thing as a donor record on the lodge books.

Named gifts need a name on the meeting and a declaration on that person. If the gift is anonymous, it is not a Gift Aid line. If the gift has a name but no declaration, the Treasurer should ask for one or leave the gift out. If the gift has both, it belongs on this year's pack with the rest of that donor's eligible gifts.

Named card gifts should not be poured into a cash scheme to save the matching work. The Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme is for small unnamed cash, subject to HMRC's published conditions. It is not a way around a missing declaration on a named donor.

Small unnamed cash may qualify under the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme if your charity meets HMRC's published conditions. That scheme does not need a per-donor declaration. It still needs a cash record for the night: the tin counted, the total written against that meeting, and the same figure banked.

GASDS does not repair a missing declaration on a named gift. It does not repair a dues row with no charitable split. It does not mean that a Chest form completed the lodge year. The Treasurer should keep the tin on its own line and keep declarations on named donors, rather than mixing the two at the end of an evening to save time.

The Masonic Charitable Foundation Relief Chest is a real, respected destination for charitable money. MCF's public pages and PDFs already cover Gift Aid on donations into a Chest. They publish a Gift Aid declaration form and Gift Aid envelope guidance. Officers already know those papers. This page will not invent Chest fees, Chest features, or a claim that one product replaces the other.

A Chest form is a declaration for gifts that go into a Chest. That is a useful job, and it is the job MCF's public material describes. It is not automatically the lodge year's declaration desk. Dues with a charitable split, and named gifts that never entered the Chest, still need a HMRC document on the lodge's own donor record if the lodge or its charity is the one filing those lines.

A lodge can use a Chest and still run the Treasurer's declaration, split, tin, and pack. Treating the two as rivals is how officers spend a year arguing about tools instead of writing down who declared and what was given. The longer note on that pairing is already on this site: how a lodge uses a Relief Chest and still runs Gift Aid.

If two officers disagree about where charitable money should later sit, they should write the destination down. They should not pause the taking of declarations until the argument ends. The claim pack and a later transfer to a Chest can move on different calendars.

The problem is not a lodge that dislikes charity. The problem is a 2019 folder nobody has opened since the last handover, a scan that lives only in a Secretary inbox, or the assumption that because a Chest form was signed once, this year's dues and named gifts are covered.

Those three situations produce the same spring. The Treasurer cannot show the document. The Treasurer cannot show that it applies to this year's gifts. The lodge files nothing, or files a guess. The next Treasurer then inherits a paying-in book and an oral account of what people think happened.

A year the lodge can stand behind looks ordinary. The Treasurer can show a valid declaration on a named donor. The Treasurer can show which of this year's eligible gifts it covers, including the charitable portion of dues where the lodge decided a split. The Treasurer can show the tin counted on each night that cash was taken. The Treasurer can hand the claim pack to a successor and expect HMRC, if they asked, to recognise the file they were looking at.

The declaration desk is easier to run as a year of ordinary tasks than as a hunt in the weeks before filing.

LodgePay already publishes the only illustration this page will repeat. Most lodges leave £1,000 or more unclaimed each year. A typical 30-member lodge reclaims £1,125 a year: £225 from dues and £900 from eight festive boards, plus GASDS on cash up to £8,000 a year.

Those amounts assume the lodge recorded the payments, held valid declarations on the named gifts, applied a decided dues split, and counted the tin. A 2019 folder that never met this year's dues run cannot produce the £225. A Chest form that covered money into a Chest cannot invent the £900 if those boards were never matched to a donor record. A tin that was never written against a meeting cannot support the GASDS line.

Use your own books in committee. If your lodge is not thirty members, or did not hold eight boards, the illustration is not your claim. Do not invent a higher figure, and do not invent a Chest comparison number.

A folder can hold paper. It cannot apply a 2019 sheet to this year's paid rows unless someone does that matching by hand every time a gift arrives.

A spreadsheet of ticks can record that someone once said yes. It is not the HMRC document. When the tick and the scan disagree, the Treasurer has to rebuild the year from two files that were never required to stay together.

The MCF Chest form, as MCF already publishes it, is the right paper for donations into a Chest. It is not, by itself, the lodge year's match to dues and named gifts that stayed on the lodge books.

The Working Tools is a real secretary operating system. We re-checked its public pages on 1 September 2026. The pricing page still listed £5 a month. The homepage and the treasurer cash-book page describe a cash book, subscriptions, dining fees, and charitable donations tracked separately from general funds. Those pages did not describe Gift Aid declarations, a HMRC claim pack, or GASDS. A cash book can record that someone paid. That is not the same as a declaration stored on a named member, applied to this year's eligible gifts, with a pack a successor can open. We will not award them a Gift Aid feature their live pages do not state.

LodgeAccounting and other meeting tools some lodges already run follow the same rule. If their public pages do not describe the declaration, the dues split, the tin count, and the claim pack, the committee should not assume those jobs are done.

Once the lodge owns taking the declaration, storing it on the member, applying the dues split, counting the tin, and assembling a pack, software is a way to stop that work living in one brother's laptop. LodgePay records a Gift Aid declaration against the member, applies it to later eligible gifts, splits the charitable portion of subscriptions the lodge already decided, tracks festive-board cash for GASDS, and produces an HMRC-ready export. The lodge files. The reclaim goes to the lodge or province bank account. LodgePay does not touch the money. Card payments go through Mooov.

LodgePay's own product copy states Gift Aid records are retained for seven years. GOV.UK's published declaration retention is six years after the most recent donation you claimed on. Follow HMRC if their published period differs for your charity.

Published prices, as on the pricing page, are Essentials from £149 a month billed annually (or £169 monthly), Complete from £229, Group from £349, and Province from £2k a month plus £35 per lodge. Those figures do not create a declaration you never took, a split the lodge never decided, or a tin that was never counted.

A Relief Chest, if you use one, remains a destination. LodgePay sits beside that choice. It does not replace MCF, and this page will not pretend it does.

If you cannot show the document on a named member, apply it to this year's eligible gifts, and hand a successor the pack, buying a platform will not file the year.