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Community Amateur Sports Club (CASC) - does your club have this status - pros and cons?


Romeo Whisky
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At a Committee meeting last year I suggested that our club might be eligible for registration with HMRC as a CASC (Community Amateur Sports Club) which might enable us to reclaim 20% Gift Aid from HMRC in respect of our club subscriptions and donations. My suggestion was not received with any great enthusiasm and it was felt it was doubtful we would qualify.

Does anyone on on the forum have any experience of their club applying for or being granted CASC? If so, how easy was it to achieve and what are the pros and cons, pitfalls etc.?

From an earlier post on a different thread I gather that Tim Flyer might be able to throw some light on this subject.

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I'm aware of a club that also looked into this or similar other outside funding a while ago and the idea was put to members for their thoughts. Although on the face of it it looks to be a good idea, what was the show-stopper for my friend's club was the worry that the relatively small financial gain was not worth the 'trouble' (as it was considered to be by the majority of their members).

I'm not going into detail and I have no connection with the club per-se so never sat in on any meetings etc, but I understand that the 'inclusive social changes' that would be required by the club and its operation in order to qualify for consideration were unacceptable and it was never pursued.

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I don’t believe you are eligible to claim gift aid on membership fees.

Gift aid is designed for donations where a Tax paying donor gives money, but importantly does NOT obtain direct benefit themselves.

Our club is formed as a CASC and the greatest benefit we enjoy is the mandatory 80% discount in business rates. If we didn’t have that we could not continue.

A CASC is also not eligible for tax on up to 50k of revenue. Formatting as a CASC does require BMFA (or a Government recognised sport governing body) affiliation. It also needs a constitution stating that if dissolved monies and assets will be paid to charity rather than members ..and profits or income must not be distributed to members there is full and detailed information on the government website.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/community-amateur-sports-clubs-detailed-guidance-notes

 

Edited By Tim Flyer on 13/08/2020 09:54:17

Edited By Tim Flyer on 13/08/2020 09:58:04

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  • 1 year later...
On 13/08/2020 at 10:52, Tim Flyer said:

I don’t believe you are eligible to claim gift aid on membership fees.

Gift aid is designed for donations where a Tax paying donor gives money, but importantly does NOT obtain direct benefit themselves.

Our club is formed as a CASC and the greatest benefit we enjoy is the mandatory 80% discount in business rates.

We were contacted by our local authority some years ago telling us that a “small business” with a turnover under whatever threshold, we were entitled to a 50% rates rebate. This is now a 100% rebate so it might be worth talking to your council rates department. 
 

Perhaps your club site is rated as a sports field?  It might be worth looking into whether you can get it reassessed?

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Community amateur sports clubs get a Government “mandatory 80% discount”on business rates. We also had a 100% discount which was applied by our local authority up until June 2021 due to lockdown arrangements for the Hospitality and Leisure sector. That discount can vary by local authority.
 

Our rates are currently being reviewed. Hopefully we will get a favourable review with no substantial increase . 

Edited by Tim Flyer
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One of the reasons we initially applied to be a CASC was that we sub let our land which is owned by our local authority . If we had not registered we would have been liable for far higher rates as our exclusive use of the land was notified to the local authority.

 

More casually run clubs that don’t have exclusive use of their site and without buildings might not be liable for business rates as they are “not occupying” land. 

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Agreed, CASC registration isn’t always the best option. Even though we get an 80% rebate if our rates increase substantially the bill could still put considerable pressure on our finances.
Local authorities are looking to recoup lost funds during the pandemic so I doubt that rates will remain static ?

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