Budget's double blow for charities

A double blow has been struck against charities and parish funds by the reduction in income tax and the increase in VAT imposed by last week's budget.
Income from covenants is cut by one eleventh with the standard rate of income tax dropping from 33 to 30%. VAT going up to
will hit priests in parishes, who get no benefit from tax-cuts, particularly badly.
Mr Charles Edwards who has been dealing with Westminster diocese's accounts said that they were bound to sutler. he appealed to charities and Catholics to try and persuade the Government to exempt charities from VAT, as they had in the case of Selective Employment Tax some years ago.
"I don't believe Mrs Thatcher wants her government to be known as the one that knocked the charities. I advise every parishioner in the country to write • to his of her MP," he said.
Help the Aged expect to lose £28,000 a year from VAT increases and £6,000 a year from the income tax changes.
The Catholic Church's failure to publish dependable figures of income and expenditure is one of the factors preventing a fully comprehensive analysis of charitable donations, according to a report published by the Charities Aid
f ion
For the first time the Foundation included in its survey charity statistics for the churches. universities and the arts.
It said thre were particular problems regarding churches, "caused perhaps equally by the proper unworldliness of the churches and by the individual parish's resistance to the quota of other internal forms of taxation imposed by its own central body."
The Foundation presented figures published by the Church of England and the PreSbyterian church but added: "The Roman Catholic Church publishes no dependable figures."
By estimating church members' annual donations at between 115 and £19, it arrived at a total figure for yearly church-giving at about £150 millions. The total income for all charities in 1978 was put at about £2,000 millions.
The only Catholic dioceses who publish their accounts at the moment are Westminster, Hexham and Newcastle, and Arundel and Brighton.
• Three of Britain's major charities have been warned by the Charity Commissioners not to get involved in "political" activities. War on Want, Oxfam and Christian Aid were all named in the Commissioners' annual report