Gift Aid is one of the most valuable and most underused financial tools available to UK churches. For every £1 donated by a UK taxpayer, your church can reclaim an additional 25p from HMRC. On a church receiving £50,000 in eligible donations, that's £12,500 back per year. Yet many churches don't claim at all or claim far less than they're entitled to.

This guide explains everything your church needs to know about Gift Aid in 2026: who qualifies, what records you need, how to submit a claim and how to automate the whole process.

Who can donate under Gift Aid?

Any UK taxpayer can Gift Aid their donations to a registered charity, including most UK churches. The donor must have paid at least as much income tax or capital gains tax in the tax year as the amount being reclaimed. Most employed and self-employed adults in the UK meet this threshold easily.

Donors need to complete a Gift Aid declaration, which is a simple statement confirming they're a UK taxpayer. This can be done once and covers all future donations to your church. ChurchLinker lets members submit their declaration through the member portal with a single tick.

What records do you need?

HMRC requires you to keep records of each Gift Aid donation for six years after the tax year in which the claim was made. For each donation, you'll need the donor's full name, home address, donation amount and the date. You also need a copy of the Gift Aid declaration.

ChurchLinker automatically stores all of this against each member's profile and generates HMRC-ready R68 reports at the click of a button.

How to submit a claim

Claims are submitted online through HMRC's Charities Online portal. You can claim as often as quarterly. There's no benefit to waiting until year end. For a church with regular weekly giving, quarterly claims keep cash flow healthy.

Your claim covers donations received in the period. ChurchLinker's Gift Aid report exports in the exact format required by HMRC Charities Online.

Common mistakes to avoid

The most common Gift Aid mistakes are claiming on donations from non-taxpayers (a donor must tick that they pay sufficient tax; they know, you don't), failing to keep declarations on file and not updating declarations when donors move house. HMRC can audit Gift Aid claims up to six years back, so accurate record-keeping matters.

Getting started

If your church isn't already claiming Gift Aid, the first step is registering with HMRC as a charity. Most UK churches are already registered charities, but you need to separately register for Gift Aid online at gov.uk. Once registered, start collecting declarations from your congregation and you can back-claim on any donations made in the last four years where you have a valid declaration.

Where the money actually goes

When members give through ChurchLinker, donations don't pass through us. Each church connects its own Stripe account (Settings → Giving & Stripe, about a 5 to 10 minute one-time setup) and gifts go directly from the giver's card into the church's own Stripe balance. Stripe pays out to the church's bank on its normal schedule. ChurchLinker takes 0% of any donation. The only deduction is Stripe's standard UK card processing fee, which is charged directly by Stripe. The current rate's published live at stripe.com/gb/pricing (around 1.5% + 25p at the time of writing). Combined with Gift Aid's 25p uplift, the church typically nets more per gift than cash or bank transfer, without any of the counting, banking or claim-form admin.

The Complete Guide to Gift Aid for UK Churches in 2026