[Theforum] Re: questions?

[Martin]

On Tuesday, April 23, 2002, at 02:00  pm, John Handelaar wrote:

> 1)  It's wise to get your accounts audited annually
and even wiser to operated your accounts to good
auditable standards whether or not your actually being
audited. (audits for small charities do tend to be pretty
cheap)

> 2)  You really don't want to go bust because there's no
>     limitation of liability and whatever group is obviously
>     in charge of decision-making is held liable (/me was
>     of the opinion that this was a great way to force
>     responsible behaviour on the CND Council).  Limited
>     liability is strictly a company thing in the UK.

Although you can have a charitable company limited
by guarantee which has much the same properties as
a limited liability commercial company

> 3)  We didn't charge sales tax, and therefore had to pay
>     all our outgoing sales tax.

For most charities, they're not actually *selling* stuff
(memberships don't count as selling) so can't charge
or reclaim sales tax. It's a complete PITA for social care
orgs which act on behalf of the government, because (unlike
govt bodies) they aren't exempt from paying sales tax.

> The bank accounts, if they were paying interest, did not
> (according to the Inland Revenue) accrue that interest to
> an individual, so were not subject to personal income tax
> - although UK banks, unless you ask them not to,
> automatically deduct taxes on interest as part of the
> calculation of that interest.

Pursuading banks to not do that while not being a registered
charity (which is somewhat easier in in the UK than establishing an
NFP corporation in the US) is fun and interesting...

Cheers
Martin
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