For Accountants

Who this briefing applies to

The analysis below assumes a VAT-registered donor making wholly taxable supplies. Three other profiles should read it differently:

Partly exempt donors (typically firms with mortgage or insurance intermediary income, healthcare providers, opticians and dentists, nurseries and training providers, residential landlords) recover overhead VAT at their partial exemption rate, and any recovery on donated goods can do no better than that rate. The corporation tax analysis is unaffected.

Flat rate scheme users cannot recover input VAT on purchases, so the VAT analysis does not apply to them at all. The corporation tax routes remain available.

Unregistered businesses have no VAT position. Corporation tax relief is the whole of their entitlement.

For all of these, the donation itself remains lawful and the section 83 relief still removes any output charge. What varies is only the input side economics.

What changed on 1 April 2026

Before April 2026, a VAT-registered business that gave away goods on which it had recovered input VAT usually had to account for output VAT on the gift. The disposal of business assets, with or without payment, is a deemed supply under VATA 1994, Schedule 4, paragraph 5(1). The only general relief is the small business gift rule in paragraph 5(2)(a), which covers gifts costing no more than £50 to the same person in a twelve-month period. A £170 Chromebook sits well above that, so donating one triggered output VAT at cost under Schedule 6, paragraph 6. In practice the input recovery and the output charge cancelled out, and giving usable goods away could cost more than scrapping them.

The government said as much when it introduced the measure. Its stated position was that the old treatment created a perverse incentive, under which a business faced no VAT cost in sending goods to landfill but could face one for donating the same goods to charity. Section 83 of the Finance Act 2026 exists to remove that barrier and encourage business-backed giving. It does so by adding an exception to the Schedule 4 deemed-supply rule, so that a qualifying charitable donation is not treated as a supply of goods, which puts it outside the scope of VAT with no output tax due. This sits alongside the long-standing zero-rating for goods donated for resale (VATA 1994, Schedule 8, Group 15, Item 2). HMRC's operational guidance is in VAT Notice 701/1, section 5.5 (paragraphs 5.5.4 to 5.5.11), published on 1 April 2026 and in the form described in this briefing.

This briefing addresses the position most relevant to corporate giving programmes: a company donating goods to a school or charity, whether by fulfilling a wishlist of things the recipient needs or by giving surplus goods it already holds. Either way the goods might be computers, white goods or furniture, or everyday items such as printer ink, paper, stationery and cleaning supplies. The relief applies to goods generally, not to any one category. Chromebooks are used as the worked example throughout, but the analysis is the same for anything on the list. It takes three questions in turn. Does the VAT output side work. Can the donor recover the input VAT. What is the corporation tax treatment.

Two donation models

Corporate giving platforms operate in two ways, and they sit differently for tax, so it is worth separating them at the outset.

Surplus donations. A company donates goods it already owns, listed on a marketplace for a school or charity to claim. These are goods the business bought for its own trade and recovered VAT on in the normal way, and only later gave away. This is the settled core of the relief.

Wishlist donations. A school or charity publishes what it needs, and a donor buys it new to fulfil that need. Here the goods are acquired specifically to donate, which is what raises the input-tax question examined below.

The VAT output side is identical for both: a qualifying donation is outside the scope under section 83 either way. The difference sits on the VAT input side, and to a lesser extent on corporation tax. The sections that follow flag which model each point applies to.

A third model, donations made under an employee nomination programme where staff choose the causes and the company funds the gift, changes the business-purpose analysis again, and arguably strengthens it, with GE Aircraft Engine Services (C-607/20) as the closer authority. That is a separate briefing.

1. VAT: the output sideSettled

Status: settled

For a donation to fall outside the scope under section 83, VAT Notice 701/1 at 5.5.5 requires all of the following:

• the goods are eligible
• they are donated for an eligible use, meaning the charity uses them in its non-business activities or donates them onward to an individual, another charity or another organisation
• the recipient is an eligible charity (see below, and this deserves close attention)
• the donor holds evidence of the donation

Value caps. The cap is applied per item, not per consignment, so each item is measured on its own. There are two limits. The higher limit is £200 per item and applies only to a listed set of essentials: household appliances, furniture, flooring, computers, tablets and mobile phones (701/1, 5.5.6). Everything else falls under the general limit of £100 per item. So a washing machine, a laptop or a Chromebook has the £200 headroom, while printer ink, paper, stationery and cleaning supplies sit under the £100 cap, which they come nowhere near at a few pounds each. Value is measured excluding VAT, as the lower of the original cost to the donor or the cost of acquiring an identical item at the time of donation (701/1, 5.5.7). A Chromebook bought at around £170 ex-VAT is comfortably inside the £200 computer cap. Note that a multi-item donation is tested item by item: nine qualifying items do not carry a tenth that breaches its cap.

Excluded goods. The relief does not apply to alcohol or tobacco, or to vaping products that carry duty (701/1, 5.5.8). Ordinary school and charity wishlist items are unaffected, but a general donation programme should exclude those categories.

Recipient eligibility is where "schools" needs real care, and where advisers should look hardest. The consultation outcome published on Budget Day 2025 stated the policy plainly: the relief applies to charities registered with HMRC for tax purposes and, where required, with a charity regulator. Small charities not required to register with a regulator were deliberately excluded on fraud-risk grounds, with the stated remedy that they can register with HMRC to come into scope. HMRC recognition for tax purposes, evidenced by an HMRC charity reference, is therefore the practical gate for every recipient. Being a charity in law is necessary but not sufficient. Points that follow for education donations:

• Charitable incorporated organisations are in scope. Community interest companies are not, and are expressly excluded (701/1, 5.5.10). A community organisation is often a CIC, so "charity" in the loose sense is not enough.
• A maintained local-authority school is a charity in law (its governing body is charitable under the School Standards and Framework Act 1998) but is an exempt charity with no Charity Commission number, and it will not usually hold its own HMRC recognition. Without an HMRC reference it is not in scope. Registration with HMRC is a one-off online application taking roughly six to eight weeks, and a school planning to receive donations should make it early. A URN or a trust's Companies House number does not establish eligibility.
• An academy trust that holds HMRC recognition qualifies, but the reference usually sits with the trust, not the individual school, so the trust is the recipient and the certification must come from it.
• Where the school itself is not eligible, a registered charity parent teacher association can receive the goods and pass them to the school, because 5.5.9 expressly allows onward donation to another organisation. The PTA must be HMRC-recognised in its own right; most PTAs claiming Gift Aid will be.

Certification and records. The charity should give the donor written confirmation of its eligible status, and for regular donations an annual update is sufficient (701/1, 5.5.10), so a certification more than a year old should be refreshed before it supports a new donation. The donor should keep a description and quantity of goods, the cost or value, the date, the recipient's details, and proof of delivery or collection (701/1, 5.5.11).

On these conditions the output-side treatment is not in doubt. A qualifying donation of a sub-£200 computer to an eligible charity is outside the scope of VAT, and no output tax arises. This applies whether the goods are surplus stock or bought new, because the qualifying-donation definition contains no surplus condition.

2. VAT: the input sideStrong argument - not yet HMRC-confirmed

A strong argument, not yet HMRC-confirmed for this fact pattern

This is the question that decides the economics, and it deserves to be set out in full, including the points HMRC will make.

Surplus goods are the straightforward case. Where the donor gives away goods it originally bought for its own taxable business, the input VAT was recovered validly at the time of purchase, because at that point the goods were for the taxable trade. The later donation does not unwind that. Before April 2026 it triggered the deemed-supply output charge; section 83 now removes that charge, and the already-recovered input VAT stays recovered. This is the case the relief was designed for, and it is not controversial. The rest of this section concerns the harder case, which is the wishlist model: goods bought new specifically to donate, where there was no prior business use to anchor the input recovery.

Section 83 removes the output charge. It does not, by itself, grant input tax recovery on the purchase. Recovery is governed by the ordinary rules. Input tax is deductible where the cost has a direct and immediate link either to specific taxable supplies or, as a general overhead, to the taxable business as a whole (HMRC VAT Input Tax manual, VIT21000).

HMRC's case, stated at full strength

Three passages in HMRC's manuals cut against a naive claim, and the third is the sharpest. VIT25600 is clear that identifying a business purpose does not automatically establish recovery on a gift. VBNB30500 states, as a starting position, that giving goods away free of charge is normally a non-business activity, so that even a wholly taxable business may have to apportion and restrict its input tax when it does so. And VATSC03322, on the small gifts rule, contains this parenthetical: "If an asset is purchased to be given to a relative or friend, the asset is not a business asset: the VAT incurred is not input tax." That is HMRC's instinct for buy-to-donate in a single sentence: goods acquired in order to be given away were never business assets, so the question of recovery never gets started.

Historically all of this was academic, because the deemed-supply charge cancelled recovery out; HMRC's manual even records that it was acceptable for a business to neither recover nor account. Section 83 removes that charge, which leaves the input question standing on its own for the first time.

The answer

The VATSC03322 passage is about private generosity: a gift to a relative or friend, made for personal reasons, routed through a company. Nobody disputes that analysis on those facts. The question is whether it extends to a gift made by a business into its own market, for reasons the business can objectively demonstrate, and on that question the passage predates and cannot survive the case law. The argument for recovery cannot rest on motive alone. It has to be that the donation is, objectively, a cost of the donor's own taxable trade, and that the goods are acquired as a component of that trade rather than as a self-standing free giveaway. On that question there is substantial authority.

Free provision does not automatically break the link. In Sveda (C-126/14, EU:C:2015:712) input VAT on a recreational path provided to the public free of charge was recoverable, because the path served the taxpayer's wider taxable activity. HMRC reads Sveda narrowly, noting in its own manuals that Sveda recovered in full because it had no non-business activity and used the asset entirely within its taxable trade (VBNB30500, VBNB72200). That is a fair distinction, and it is why the stronger authorities for a donation are the ones where the asset genuinely left the business.

An asset can leave the business entirely and still support recovery. In Iberdrola (C-132/16, EU:C:2017:683) a developer recovered VAT on works to a third party's asset that the third party kept for free, because the works were necessary for its own taxable activity. The court capped recovery at what was necessary and required the cost to feed the taxable prices. In Mitteldeutsche Hartstein-Industrie (C-528/19, judgment of 16 September 2020) a quarry operator recovered VAT on a road it built and handed to a municipality for free, as an overhead of its own trade, and the court confirmed there was no deemed supply because the works served the operator's business and led to no untaxed final consumption. Both cases establish that a permanent free transfer to a third party does not default to non-business treatment where the expenditure genuinely serves the donor's taxable trade, subject to a proportionality limit.

A free giveaway of goods for a business purpose is a business cost. This is the domestic authority that meets VBNB30500 and VATSC03322 most directly. In Associated Newspapers Ltd v HMRC [2017] EWCA Civ 54 the publisher gave away high-street retail vouchers free to drive newspaper circulation. The Court of Appeal held the vouchers were acquired for the purpose of the taxable business, and that giving them away free did not attract output tax. Critically, the court framed the test as an objective one: whether input tax is recoverable is not a question of subjective intent but requires an objective analysis, in terms of the taxpayer's identifiable economic activities, of why the input supplies were acquired. The publisher was denied recovery on one tranche of vouchers, but only because a voucher-specific rule (VATA 1994, Schedule 10A, paragraph 4(2)) deemed their issue consideration to be nil, so no VAT had been incurred to recover. That technicality has no application to physical goods, which carry real input VAT. For donated goods, the useful part of the decision applies and the limiting part does not.

Free provision for a genuine business purpose is not automatically caught by the deemed-supply rules. In GE Aircraft Engine Services (C-607/20, judgment of 17 November 2022) the CJEU held that vouchers given free to employees under a recognition scheme were not a deemed supply, because the scheme served business purposes and any private benefit was incidental. This is an output-side and staff-facing decision, so it supports the output relief rather than input recovery, but it reinforces the principle that free provision with a real business driver is not treated as non-business by default.

An intervening outside-the-scope step does not defeat recovery.In HMRC v Frank A Smart & Son Ltd [2019] UKSC 39 a fully taxable farmer recovered input VAT on the cost of acquiring subsidy entitlements, even though the receipt of the subsidy was outside the scope of VAT, because the purpose was to fund its taxable business. The case is a fundraising one rather than a giveaway, so it is authority for the principle of looking past an outside-the-scope step, not a donation precedent in itself. The Supreme Court allowed recovery on the express footing that the taxpayer carried on no downstream non-economic or exempt activity.

Putting it together. The manuals' starting point, that a free giveaway is normally non-business and that goods bought to give away are not business assets, is a rebuttable presumption, not a rule, and it was written for private generosity in an era when the deemed-supply charge made the question academic. On the authorities above, the presumption is displaced where the donation is objectively a cost of the donor's own taxable trade. The bridge is the objective-purpose test from Associated Newspapers: the treatment follows what the expenditure genuinely is, judged on identifiable economic activity, not how it is labelled. For a business whose customers and staff are in the community it is donating into, and whose trade depends on its standing there, the donation can be an overhead of that trade in substance. HMRC's test is designed to look through mere labelling, so the case has to be real on the facts, and where it is, the presumption does not survive it.

Why the recognition mechanics matter legally, not just commercially

A structural point that is easy to miss. The donor's case is strongest when the commercial return is visible, but a return provided by the charity would destroy the donation. Section 83 and Notice 5.5.9 define a donation as freely given with nothing received in return, and a charity that agreed to advertise the donor in exchange for goods would be making a taxable supply of sponsorship, taking the gift outside the relief on the output side and, depending on the arrangement, into the tainted-donation rules for corporation tax.

The resolution is that the recognition can come from a third party. Where a giving platform, rather than the recipient, provides the leaderboards, badges and public profile, the donor obtains demonstrable commercial visibility while the charity gives nothing back. The donation stays a donation, and the recognition still evidences the business purpose. A voluntary, unprompted thank-you from the recipient, such as a mention in a school newsletter or a listing among supporters, sits within what the Notice itself treats as an insignificant acknowledgement and does not disturb the analysis. The line is obligation: the donor may hope for anything; the charity must owe nothing.

The single most important document: the rationale note

Every authority above turns on why the goods were acquired, assessed objectively. The evidence that wins or loses that question is a contemporaneous record of the commercial reason, made at or before purchase. It need not be long. One dated sentence does the work:

• "Donation to X Primary: our customers are households in this postcode, and the school's newsletter acknowledgement reaches them directly."
• "Donation programme supports our social value submission for the [named authority] tender closing in March."
• "Building local employer profile for our apprentice recruitment this autumn."

A note written after HMRC opens an enquiry is worth a fraction of one written before the purchase order. Advisers should have clients adopt this as a habit at the point of donation, and platforms that capture it as part of the donation flow are doing the donor's evidence work for them. Note the framing: publicity, customer reach, tender readiness and recruitment are the right words, because they are the words HMRC's own guidance uses when it allows the deduction. "Charity" and "goodwill" standing alone are the words that trigger the presumption.

What HMRC would probe

An honest account of where the argument is weakest, because these are the questions an officer would ask and an adviser should ask first:

Proportionality. Iberdrola caps recovery at what is necessary for the business. Donations at a level a marketing budget would never justify invite restriction. Two Chromebooks against an SME's turnover is marketing; a programme dwarfing the advertising spend needs a better answer.

Whose market. The argument rests on the donation reaching the donor's customers or workforce. A donor with no local consumer base, or a donation into a town where the donor does not trade, has the diffuse "good corporate citizen" rationale that the presumption exists to catch.

Personal connections. BIM45072 lists personal connection to the recipient as a negative indicator, and the same instinct applies for VAT. A donation to the director's child's school is not disqualified, but it starts from behind.

Partial exemption. As above, a partly exempt donor's recovery is restricted before the argument even begins, and the apportionment machinery gives an officer a ready compromise.

Apportionment as the landing point. Even where the business purpose is accepted, Iberdrola and Mitteldeutsche expressly allow recovery to be restricted to the extent of business use. Full recovery is the right answer where the link is tight; a negotiated apportionment is the realistic outcome where the purpose is mixed. Advisers should price that into the advice.

Status. The recoverability of input VAT on goods bought specifically to donate is a strong, well-authorised argument, and HMRC's contrary starting point is rebuttable on the case law. It is not, however, confirmed by HMRC guidance for this precise fact pattern, and the manual passages above are genuine points that have to be met rather than ignored. The route to certainty for a given structure is a VAT non-statutory clearance, putting the actual facts to HMRC. Advisers should form their own view on their client's facts, giving weight to the client's VAT status and the strength of the link between the donation and the client's taxable trade.

Seeking a clearance: what to put in it

A non-statutory clearance application on this point should be built to answer the objective-purpose test on its face. In practice that means including:

• the donor's VAT registration details and confirmation of fully taxable status (or the partial exemption position, stated candidly)
• a description of the trade and its customer base, showing the overlap with the recipient's community
• the rationale note or programme document, dated before the donations began
• any tender, contract or social value commitment the donations support, which converts the overhead argument into direct attribution
• the recognition arrangements, showing that nothing is received from the recipient beyond voluntary acknowledgement
• the evidence pack for a sample donation: recipient's HMRC charity reference and certification, item descriptions and values against the caps, delivery confirmation
• the scale of the programme relative to the donor's marketing spend

A clearance granted on one donor's facts binds HMRC only for that donor, but the first favourable outcome on this fact pattern will be persuasive for every similar case, and a well-built application is the cheapest way anyone will ever get certainty on this question.

3. Corporation tax: a separate code, and QCD relief is not the route for goods

Corporation tax is separate from the VAT analysis, and one point catches people out immediately.

Qualifying charitable donations relief does not cover a gift of goods. Relief for qualifying charitable donations sits in Part 6 CTA 2010. Section 189 deducts them from total profits, capped so they cannot create or increase a loss. Section 190 defines them, and section 191 sets Condition A: the donation must be a payment of a sum of money. Chapter 3 extends the regime only to gifts of qualifying investments and land. A donation of Chromebooks is therefore not a qualifying charitable donation. Reaching for "charitable donations relief" on donated goods is a dead end, and framing the gift as philanthropy to fit it would also undercut the business-purpose basis the other routes depend on. The contrast is worth stating for completeness: a gift of money to the same school does qualify under section 189, which matters where a giving programme mixes cash and goods, because the two halves take entirely different routes to relief.

Two doors do open for goods, depending on who the donor is.

Route A, the computer trader: section 105 CTA 2009. Where a company gives away an article of a kind it manufactures or sells in the course of its trade, no amount has to be brought in as a trading receipt on the disposal (s105(1) and (2)). The recipient can be a charity or a designated educational establishment, which brings schools into scope through section 106. This gives clean cost relief and needs no wholly-and-exclusively argument. It is available only to a donor that actually trades in the goods, so it fits an IT reseller donating Chromebooks, not a general business buying them in to give away. Section 105 is expressly subject to the tainted charity donation rules (see below), so the gift must be genuinely unconditional.

Route B, the non-trader: a trading deduction, if wholly and exclusively. For a donor that does not trade in the goods, the gift is not blocked by the business gifts and entertainment disallowance, because gifts to charity are carved out by section 1300 CTA 2009. But the general wholly-and-exclusively rule in section 54 CTA 2009 still applies, and a pure gift can fail it. HMRC's Business Income Manual at BIM45072 sets out the indicators it weighs: a local connection between the business and the recipient, a commercial return such as publicity, and a genuine business rationale, against personal connection or an absence of business purpose. For a locally present business donating into its own community with a recorded commercial purpose, this deduction is defensible. For a donation with no business nexus, it is not. The rationale note described above serves this test and the VAT test simultaneously.

Surplus used equipment: capital allowances. Where the donor gives away equipment it used in its own trade rather than trading stock, the disposal runs through the capital allowances rules, not a fresh profit deduction. A gift of plant or machinery used in the trade to a charity or a designated educational establishment carries a nil disposal value under section 63 CAA 2001, so no balancing charge arises. This is the natural corporation tax route for the surplus marketplace where the goods were the donor's own kit rather than stock it sells. Note it does not apply to wishlist goods, which were never used in the trade; those take Route A or Route B.

Tainted charity donations: the test changed for donations made on or after 6 April 2026. The Finance Act 2026 (clause 54 and Schedule 9, amending the regime in Part 21C CTA 2010) replaced the purpose test in Condition B with an outcome test, and replaced "financial advantage" with the broader "financial assistance", which non-exhaustively includes loans, guarantees, indemnities and any form of investment, and is caught even where provided on arm's length terms. Donations made on or before 5 April 2026 remain under the old rules. Three conditions must all be met: arrangements it is reasonable to assume would not have happened independently of the donation (Condition A); a linked person who is not a charity receiving financial assistance, directly or indirectly, from the recipient charity or a connected charity under or in connection with those arrangements (Condition B); and the donor not being a qualifying charity-owned company or relevant housing provider (Condition C). Two consequences for goods donations. First, a simple donation with no arrangements attached is outside the rules entirely; HMRC's guidance (Annex viii A to the detailed guidance notes, 2026) gives the example of a charity's unprompted thank-you letter as involving no arrangement at all. Recognition provided by a third-party platform cannot taint for the further reason that Condition B requires assistance from the charity. Second, because the test is now outcome-based, donor motive is irrelevant in both directions: a commercial motive cannot taint a donation, and the absence of any bad purpose will not save an arrangement under which assistance in fact flows back from the charity. What would taint is the charity supplying the donor or a connected person with loans, contracts, services, below-market lettings, preferential access or other value under an arrangement linked to the gift. Advisers reviewing any arrangement where something does flow back should also note the carve-outs (s939E CTA 2010 as amended), which include arm's length payment for work done for the charity and assistance already taken into account in the trading stock relief.

The alignment, and the tension. Route B and the VAT overhead argument rest on the same foundation. The genuine business purpose that satisfies wholly-and-exclusively for corporation tax is the same purpose that supports treating the input VAT as an overhead of the taxable trade. Evidence it once and you support both. The tension to avoid is the opposite framing: presenting the donation as detached charity to chase a relief that does not exist for goods, which would weaken both the corporation tax deduction and the VAT recovery in one move.

Summary table

The evidence file, and where CommuniTie fits

Both live questions, the VAT overhead argument and the corporation tax deduction, turn on the same thing: objective evidence that the donation is a genuine cost of the donor's taxable trade, made to an eligible recipient, within the caps, and actually delivered. The record required is therefore both a compliance file for the section 83 relief and the evidence base for the input-tax and wholly-and-exclusively arguments. It should contain:

• written confirmation of the recipient's eligible charity status, including its HMRC charity reference, refreshed annually for regular donors
• a per-item value record on the ex-VAT cost or replacement basis, showing each item is within its cap
• proof of delivery to or collection by the charity, authenticated by the recipient
• a description, quantity and date for each donation
• the contemporaneous rationale note, dated at or before purchase, showing the connection to the donor's own trade and community
• for a computer-trading donor relying on s105, evidence that the goods are of a kind sold in the course of the trade
• confirmation that nothing of substance is received from the recipient in return, beyond a voluntary acknowledgement such as inclusion in a list of supporters

CommuniTie is built around this. The school or charity publishes a wishlist of the goods it actually needs. A donor logs in, fulfils an item, and the platform captures the recipient's HMRC-referenced certification, the recipient's confirmation of receipt, the per-item valuation against the caps, and the donor's stated commercial rationale, in a single evidence file generated at the moment of donation. Recognition (leaderboards, public profile) is provided by the platform, not the recipient, which preserves the donation while evidencing the commercial return. Two features of that model matter for the tax analysis. First, the donor's adviser reviews evidence rather than assembling it, and the same record supports the recipient eligibility, the delivery proof, the valuation, and the business rationale. Second, because the recipient states its own need and the donor meets it, the giving is demonstrably need-led rather than the donor clearing surplus stock, which strengthens the business-purpose and objective-cost arguments both reliefs depend on.

Status and next steps

The VAT output relief and the corporation tax routes above are established law and can be relied on for the fact patterns described. The single point that is strong but not HMRC-confirmed is the recoverability of input VAT on goods bought specifically to donate. It turns on ordinary attribution principles rather than on section 83 itself, it is well supported by the case law, and HMRC's contrary starting point in its manuals is rebuttable, but the point should be confirmed for a specific structure rather than assumed. The way to do that is a non-statutory clearance putting the actual facts to HMRC, built as described above. Advisers should apply this to their own client's circumstances and take their own view.

References

Legislation

• VATA 1994, Schedule 4, paragraph 5(1) (deemed supply of business assets) and paragraph 5(2)(a) (£50 business gifts exception)
• VATA 1994, Schedule 6, paragraph 6 (value of a deemed supply, at cost)
• Section 83, Finance Act 2026 (introduced as Clause 80, Finance Bill 2025-26), inserting the exception into VATA 1994, Schedule 4, treating qualifying charitable donations as outside the scope of VAT from 1 April 2026
• VATA 1994, Schedule 8, Group 15, Item 2 (existing zero-rating for goods donated for resale)
• VATA 1994, Schedule 10A, paragraph 4(2) (retailer vouchers; relevant only to the voucher point in Associated Newspapers)
• Finance Act 2010, Schedule 6 (definition of charity for tax purposes)
• CTA 2009, section 54 (wholly and exclusively) and section 1300 (gifts to charity not disallowed by the gifts and entertainment rule)
• CTA 2009, section 105 (gifts of trading stock to charities and designated educational establishments) and section 106 (designated educational establishment)
• CTA 2010, Part 6, sections 189 and 190 (qualifying charitable donations relief), section 191 (Condition A, payment of a sum of money) and Chapter 3 from section 203 (disposals of investments and land)
• CTA 2010, Part 21C (tainted charity donations), as amended by Finance Act 2026, clause 54 and Schedule 9 (outcome test and "financial assistance" replacing the purpose test and "financial advantage", for donations made on or after 6 April 2026)
• CAA 2001, section 63(2) (nil disposal value on a gift of used plant or machinery to a charity or designated educational establishment)

HMRC guidance

• VAT Notice 701/1, "How VAT affects charities", section 5.5 (paragraphs 5.5.4 to 5.5.11), published 1 April 2026
• VAT Input Tax manual: VIT21000 (direct and immediate link; cost components; general overheads), VIT10200 (business purpose test), VIT25600 (gifts of goods), VIT62100 (direct and immediate link case law)
• VAT Supply and Consideration manual: VATSC03322 (business gifts value limit; assets purchased to give away)
• VAT Business and Non-Business manual: VBNB30500 (why apportionment is needed; free giveaways as normally non-business; treatment of Sveda) and VBNB72200 (Sveda in HMRC's case list)
• Business Income Manual: BIM45072 (gifts to charity; wholly and exclusively)
• Charities detailed guidance notes, Annex viii A: tainted charity donations on or after 6 April 2026 (published April 2026, updated July 2026)

Case law

• Sveda UAB, C-126/14, EU:C:2015:712 (22 October 2015)
• Iberdrola Inmobiliaria Real Estate Investments EOOD, C-132/16, EU:C:2017:683 (14 September 2017)
• Mitteldeutsche Hartstein-Industrie AG, C-528/19 (16 September 2020)
• Associated Newspapers Ltd v HMRC [2017] EWCA Civ 54 (10 February 2017)
• GE Aircraft Engine Services Ltd, C-607/20 (17 November 2022)
• HMRC v Frank A Smart & Son Ltd [2019] UKSC 39 (29 July 2019)
• BLP Group plc, referenced in HMRC's VIT manual at VIT62100

Policy and stakeholder material

• HM Treasury and HMRC consultation and summary of responses on the VAT treatment of business donations of goods to charity (April and November 2025)
• Association of Taxation Technicians, Finance Bill 2025-26 written evidence on clause 80 (23 January 2026)
• ICAEW, CBI and In Kind Direct commentary on the 2026 relief