Re: FN-FORUM: Accepting donations on a website - legal/tax question

date posted 22nd August 2007 17:29

From: "Tony Crockford" [EMAIL REMOVED]
>
> On 22 Aug 2007, at 17:28, Martin Wheatley wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> One of my clients has just asked me what they should be doing for
>> accepting donations for access to a website, the donations are there to
>> keep the site running, and any excess will be used to part pay for
>> nights out/events. They want to know what they need to do from a
>> legal/taxman point of view. They are not a company just a group of
>> friends (a rugby team to be precise) so there's no accounting or
>> anything available to run this through.
>>
>> The donations will be via a paypal button on the website.
>>
>> Anyone set-up or advised on this sort of thing before?
>>
>
> The should have a club constitution and a committee structure that
> handles finances, can't believe they don't.
>
> Every club that takes money from it's members should do that, appoint a
> treasurer, and open a bank account (clubs and societies) into which to
> pay the money.
>
> annual accounts should be reported to the membership at the AGM.
>
> if they don't do this, someone will be personally liable for the income
> and expenses of the money they handle.
>
> Actually it might be worse:
>
> http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/ctsa/small-tax-liabilities.htm
> or maybe they could become a charity:
> http://www.sportni.net/Publications/Tax%20_Booklet.pdf
>

Form a company limited by guarantee. When registering the company ask the
registration agent
for a standard sports club Memo and Articles template.

Mike A.