HM Revenue & Customs has updated its guidance on digital gift aid, and said it will introduce a “pre-donation questionnaire” which supporters must complete before they can make gift aided donations online.

The new guidance has been produced following a dispute with JustGiving over whether charities could claim gift aid to donations on its website signed off with messages of support by more than one person, such as "love from mum and dad" - at a cost of millions to charities. 

Tony Johnson, a senior technical adviser at HMRC, told Charity Tax Group’s annual conference yesterday that this had been down to a “miscommunication” and that the guidance had been produced as a response.

He said he drew up the guidance in response to the Justgiving incident, and that the online donation platform was happy with the new guidance.

Johnson said HMRC is planning on introducing an additional step ahead of an online donation to help sort this problem.

He said that going forwards, there will be a "pre-donation questionnaire" for a donor to complete.

He said that this will mean “there is no need to look at the supporter message for any kind of steer”. This will mean if the donor is giving the information, there is little accountability for the platform operator to stop claims going through.

Johnson said they will be speaking to all digital platform operators, not just Justgiving, to introduce that kind of process. 

JustGiving has called the new guidance a "change in position" from HMRC.

The guidance is on giving to charity through digital platforms, including social media and fundraising websites and was updated earlier this week.

The guidance, which is new section 3.44 on digital/social giving accounts, clarifies and includes examples of worked examples to clarify specific situations to users.

It states: “Some social giving accounts allow a donor to leave a supportive message for a fundraiser participating in a sponsored event, or a dedication message in remembrance of a loved one. It is okay to extend such messages beyond the donor as long as the donation is still of the donors own money.”

A spokeswoman from JustGiving said: “JustGiving is delighted that HMRC has now changed its position on gift aid claims for individual donations where the accompanying message includes more than one name. This means that thousands of affected charities will be able to regain the gift aid income that they had lost.

"JustGiving will be notifying charities as soon as we have a timeframe from HMRC and those charities affected will be able to see the retrospective Gift Aid in their reports on JustGiving.”

A spokesman from the CTG said that it is good that HMRC is scrutinising online donations but the impact of any proposed policy on charitable donations would have to be looked at.