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Thread: Tithe and offering made to church treated as donation?

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    Tithe and offering made to church treated as donation?

    Hi,

    A client of mine is planning to give a large amount of money to his church. Is this seen as a donation for income tax purposes and will it attract donations tax as with any other donation?

    Thank you in advance for your reply.

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    Please give him my bank account.

    I am financially disabled

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    Diamond Member Mike C's Avatar
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    Here is an excerpt from the South African Council of Churches Website that might prove helpful

    http://www.sacc-ct.org.za/taxbook2.html#church


    DEDUCTIBILITY OF DONATIONS

    One of the ways the government recognises the value of PBOs and encourages people to give money to support them is by allowing donors to deduct their gifts from their gross income, thereby lowering their taxes. In the past, only donations to universities and other tertiary educational institutions were tax deductible. Section 18A of the amended Income Tax Act empowers the Minister of Finance to publish a list of public benefit activities, donations in aid of which will be tax deductible.

    A draft list was published in July 2001, and a revised list was incorporated into the Income Tax Act in June 2002. In terms of the list, the following public benefit activities will be approved for the purposes of tax deductions:

    Education by a school or higher education institution;
    Educare and early childhood development services;
    Provision of school buildings and equipment;
    Addressing needs in education provision, learning, teaching, training, curriculum support, governance, whole school development, or safety and security at educational institutions;
    Educational enrichment, academic support, supplementary tuition, bridging courses or outreach programmes for the poor and needy;
    Adult basic education and training and further education and training;
    Employment training;
    Education and training of persons with permanent mental or physical disabilities;
    Prevention of HIV infection, distribution of information about HIV/AIDS or the provision of care or counseling to people living with by HIV/AIDS (including the counseling of family members of sufferers);
    Provision of health care services to poor and needy persons;
    Care or counseling of terminally ill persons or persons with a severe physical or mental disability (including the counseling of their families);
    Care or counselling of abandoned, abused, neglected, orphaned or homeless children;
    Care or counselling of poor and needy aged persons;
    Establishment and management of a transfrontier area.

    Any taxpayer wishing to take advantage of this concession must have a receipt from the beneficiary PBO indicating:

    the organisation's name, address, and reference number;
    the donor's name and address;
    the date and amount of the donation;
    a certification that the receipt is issued for the purposes of section 18A of the Income Tax Act, 1962, and that the donation has been or will be used exclusively for the objects of the beneficiary PBO.

    The annual ceiling on deductions has been raised to R1000 or 5 per cent of taxable income, whichever is greater.

    In terms of the law, an organisation may issue the required receipt only if it is engaged exclusively in public benefit activities that have been designated as donor-deductible. However, SARS has indicated that it will permit an organisation to conduct both donor-deductible and non-donor-deductible activities provided that income and expenditure on the former are kept separate and certified as such by a properly qualified accountant. [See "Comments on Representations to the Joint Sitting of the PCOF and the SCOF on the Taxation Laws Amendment Bill, 2002", 14 June 2002, pp.14-15.]
    No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. - Aesop "The Lion and the Mouse"

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    We tithe as a company and the church we tithe to is not registered, so there is no donations tax benefit.

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    In anyway a tithe shouldn't be something big for your client, the tithe is standard for every believer and is based on the fact that you will receive back more 30, 60, 100 fold. There's also a scripture that says what a man saws that's what he will also reap, so based on biblical prinicples your clients should't even include that.
    ---There is no traffic at the extra mile---

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