Gift Aid paid to charities dipped slightly during the Covid-19 pandemic but is still around the £1.4bn mark, according to latest government figures.

The figures show that the Gift Aid repaid to charities in 2020/21 was £1.38bn. This is down 1% on the previous year’s figure of £1.4bn but up on 2018/19’s tally of £1.35bn.

The total number of charities benefitting from Gift Aid fell by around 2.5% in the year to April 2021, to just under 70,000. This is inline with a similar decline before the pandemic.

The figures show that for 2020/21 more than half of the value of Gift Aid repayments went to charities that received less than £1m a year, which is also in line with previous years.

For the tax year ending April 2021 the total rax reliefs for charities and their donors fell by £0.1bn to £5.7bn, compared to the previous year. Just under £4bn of this was handed directly to charities, which is around £0.1bn lower than the previous tax year. This drop coincides with a temporary reduction in Stamp Duty from July 2020.

The latest figures include Community Amateur Sports Clubs for the first time, which adds 1,000 organisations each year.

The government plans to publish its next set of figures in June 2022.

Last year it emerged that Gift Aid and other tax reliefs to encourage giving are only backed by less than half of people in the UK.

This research, also found that men, older people and those on higher incomes are more likely to back tax reliefs to support charities.

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