Gift Aid claims go to HMRC under your charity’s HMRC charity reference, from an authorised official, signed in with your charity’s HMRC credentials. Record these once in Gift Aid settings.

  • Permissions. Viewing the settings needs taxes:read:giftaid; changing them needs taxes:admin:giftaid.

Enter the details

  1. Open Gift Aid, then click Gift Aid settings (or choose Gift Aid settings in the Taxes menu). The HMRC connection tab opens.
  2. Under Charity details, enter the charity name and the HMRC charity reference HMRC gave you when you registered for Gift Aid (one or two letters then numbers, for example AB12345). Choose your Charity regulator and enter your registration number, or choose Not registered with a regulator for an exempt or excepted charity.
  3. Under Authorised official, enter the person HMRC holds on record as authorised to make claims: their name, daytime phone number and postcode.
  4. Under HMRC connection, choose whether claims go to HMRC test service or HMRC live service. Use the test service until a claim has gone through, then switch to live.
  5. Choose how to sign in to HMRC:
    • Government Gateway: the user ID and password the charity uses for Charities Online.
    • HMRC API application: the client ID and client secret of an application registered on the HMRC Developer Hub.
  6. Click Save settings.

Passwords and secrets

Passwords and client secrets are stored encrypted, separately from the other settings, and are never shown again. When one is saved, its field is shown as dots: leave it blank to keep the saved value, or type a new one to replace it. Remove saved password (or Remove saved client secret) deletes it when you next save.

The page shows Credentials saved when the chosen sign-in method has both its ID and its secret, and Credentials incomplete otherwise.

Declaration methods

The Declaration methods tab sets how your charity collects declarations. See Manage declaration methods.