HMRC are inviting bids from interested charities and will allocate a guaranteed £1.5m per year over the next 3 years to the voluntary and community sector (VCS) to support taxpayers who need extra help understanding and complying with their tax obligations and claiming their entitlements, including those who are currently digitally excluded.

 They are looking for VCS organisations to help taxpayers form or rebuild a relationship with HMRC that enables them to engage directly with HMRC in the future.

 Bids should include one or more of the following activities:

• providing advice and support for HMRC’s customers who need extra help and cannot afford to pay for it
• assisting customers who are digitally excluded, to build their confidence and capability to use HMRC’s online services for themselves
• providing specialist advice and taking referrals by telephone or email from HMRC’s extra help service
• assisting customers who need independent advice and support with more complex tax issues, for example complicated PAYE issues, or claims for Special Relief and appeals

Interested organisation would require the infrastructure and capability to handle in the region of 700 referrals per year, and would be responsible for bringing individual cases to conclusion.

We invite bids for funding of between £10,000 and £450,000 per annum, with a maximum threshold set at 50% of your organisation’s turnover (last audited accounts).

We will only accept one bid per organisation. To qualify for a bid the organisation must comply with all of the following rules:

You will need to confirm that you satisfy all of the following criteria to be eligible to apply for grant funding from HMRC.

1. Your organisation must be one of the following:
   • registered charity
   • voluntary and community sector organisation
   • social enterprise
   • mutual
   • co-operative
2. Your organisation must have 3 years of financial history in place.
3. Your organisation must have a turnover of no less than £40,000 per annum.
4. No directors within your organisation to have been disqualified in the last 5 years.
5. No director, trustee, treasurer or anyone in a position of financial responsibility to have had a relevant conviction, such as for fraud, within the last 3 years.
6. You must have sound and comprehensive financial systems and processes that enable you to track the amount of funding spent throughout the year, and demonstrate that you have allocated the funding to the specific activity detailed in your bid.
7. You are able to identify customers who have HMRC-related issues and be competent to help them with one or more HMRC services, for example:
8. Tax (PAYE and Self Assessment)
9. Working Tax Credits
10. Child Tax Credits
11. Child Benefit
12. You must have in place an infrastructure for monitoring and evaluating that is capable of reporting agreed outcomes; i.e. the impact on your clients and that your outcomes represent value for money.
13. No aspect of the activity funded by this grant may be party-political in intention, use or presentation.
14. The grant cannot be used to support or promote religious activity.

Any bids that progress through the evaluation process will be subject to verification of the eligibility criteria along with additional financial /operating information as part of our due diligence process.

The timeline for the funding round is as follows:

• 8 November 2015 – Deadline for receipt of completed applications
• within 3 working days – we will acknowledge receipt of your application
• from 14 December 2015 – notification sent to successful applicants
• 1 April 2016 – grant agreements in place and new funding begins

 

Charities that are interested should apply to HMRC VCS Stakeholder Management Team – mailbox.stakeholder@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk

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