Employees donating through payroll giving exceeds one million for the first time

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Good news from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs! Revised figures from HMRC have shown that for 2012/13 a record £155 million was donated to charities through the payroll giving scheme. And another record has fallen with the total number of employees engaged in the scheme passing the one million mark for the first time.

The initial figures released by HMRC in summer 2013 showed an increase on the previous year of just £6 million through payroll giving. However they have now drastically revised those figures up revealing a true increase of £37 million compared to the previous year.

This translates to an impressive 31% increase in the value of donations on the previous year and an even larger 39% increase in the number of employees participating in the scheme. This will be welcome news to Britain’s charities who are keen for more people to give regularly, thus allowing them to better plan for the future.

Peter O’Hara, managing director of Workplace Giving, noted that it is unlikely there is just one factor at work but rather a variety of factors to explain such a dramatic rise. This includes more employers signing up their organisations to the scheme and more employees being aware of the ability to give through their payroll. He said that ‘visibility of payroll giving has definitely increased’.

Payroll giving, which allows employees to give to charities through their salaries before tax, means when donating £1 the employee only pays 80p with the taxman paying the rest. Payroll giving has seen a steady increase in income since its introduction in 1987 and these latest figures are a reason to be enthusiastic. Even so, a report by the Charities Aid Foundation found that, as of 2012 just 3% of the workforce is enrolled in the scheme. That figure is relatively low and we believe it can and should be much higher.

Still, this is a positive start to the New Year and we look forward to more records being broken in 2014!

Holly Mitchell


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