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The small donations scheme in the UK

How a mosque that claims Gift Aid can also claim on small cash and contactless gifts from people who never filled in a declaration, and the records a collection needs for it.

For treasurers and boards of mosques in the UK that are charities. This guide is general information about record-keeping, not tax advice.

What the scheme is for

Gift Aid lets a charity claim a top-up from HMRC on donations from UK taxpayers who have made a Gift Aid declaration. A Friday collection is largely loose cash and contactless taps from people who never fill in a form, so little of it can carry Gift Aid. The Gift Aid small donations scheme, GASDS for short, lets a charity claim on those small donations without a declaration.

What qualifies

  • Cash donations of £30 or less.
  • Contactless card donations of £30 or less, collected on or after 6 April 2019.
  • Not membership fees.

The limits

  • Up to £2,000 in a tax year.
  • No more than 10 times the Gift Aid claim. GOV.UK puts it this way: “Your GASDS claim cannot be more than 10 times your Gift Aid claim.” So a mosque needs real Gift Aid declarations too, not only collection boxes.
  • Gift Aid in the same year, and a clean record. The charity must claim Gift Aid in the same tax year as it wants to claim GASDS, without getting a penalty in the last 2 tax years.

Community buildings

Donations collected in a community building can allow a larger claim. For somewhere to count as the charity’s community building, it needs to have hosted at least 6 charity events there, each attended by at least 10 people, and GOV.UK gives a religious building as an example. Since April 2017, donations collected in the same council area as the building can count too. The rules for buildings, and for charities connected to each other, have more detail than fits here, so read HMRC’s guidance before relying on them.

The records to keep

  • For cash: the total cash donations collected, the date of the collection, and the date it was paid into a bank account.
  • For contactless: the receipts from the card machine.
  • For collections in a community building: the address where the donations were collected, with its postcode, the type of event, how many events took place, an estimate of how many people attended, and when the collection happened.

A two-person Friday count already gives the date and the total, counted and signed by two people. Add the date the money was banked to the count sheet, and keep the card machine’s receipts with it.

Claiming

A charity claims under GASDS in the same way as it claims Gift Aid. GOV.UK’s page on the scheme doesn’t give a deadline for claims, so check HMRC’s guidance on Gift Aid claims for the time limit before leaving a year unclaimed.

Source: GOV.UK, Claim Gift Aid: the small donations scheme, read 28 October 2026. The mosque’s accountant can say how the rules apply to it.

Common questions

Can a mosque claim Gift Aid on a Friday collection?

On small cash and contactless donations of £30 or less, through the Gift Aid small donations scheme, without declarations: up to £2,000 in a tax year, if the mosque also claims Gift Aid that year and keeps the records the scheme asks for.

Does the small donations scheme need a Gift Aid declaration?

No. GOV.UK says you don’t need a Gift Aid declaration to claim under the scheme.

Can membership fees go into a small donations claim?

No. The scheme covers donations, not membership fees.

What records does a mosque need for a small donations claim?

For cash, the total collected, the date of the collection and the date it was banked; for contactless, the card machine’s receipts; and for collections in a community building, the address with postcode, the type of event, the number of events, the estimated attendance and when the collection happened.

Gift Aid, and claims under the small donations scheme, are planned for Ahsan in the UK. The live demo shows the two-person Friday count that the scheme’s records can come from. More about giving in Ahsan.