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Stock Parish Church |
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At this time, as in previous years, up and down the Diocese, Parish Treasurers are burning the midnight oil, balancing the books, preparing Annual Returns, making budget projections, and thinking of ways of improving income to off set the insidious and inevitable increases in Parish costs. Despite assurances that inflation is under control our Parish income never seems to advance as rapidly as our expenses. There is one way that we can increase our income without any additional cost to ourselves. Gift Aid has been created to help charities such as churches and it works very simply. Taxpayers, by completing a simple Gift Aid form, can enable the church to claim from the Tax Authorities approximately 28% of the amount contributed. Simply multiply your offertory by 1.28 and you will discover how much more it would be worth if it were “gift-aided”. For your information the amounts which we have received in recent years have averaged around £4,000, and this makes the Taxman consistently our highest financial benefactor (not bad for someone we love to hate). At the moment we have approximately 50 parishioners who are actively involved in the Gift Aid scheme and we would dearly love to see this number increase. There is a reluctance to become involved on the part of some who do not want their weekly offertory to be known. I can assure you that for obvious reasons the only person who needs to know is the Gift Aid organizer. Gift Aid donors are given a box of envelopes into which their offertory is placed: these envelopes bear a number and it is from this number that the organizer identifies the contributor. Gift Aid has become hugely important to all charities and I would strongly urge any one who is (or whose spouse is) a tax-payer to consider making their weekly offertory in this way. Our Parish Gift Aid organizer is Michael McEvoy who, together with any member of the Pansh Council, will be pleased to supply any additional information which may be required. Archie Simpson, Parish Treasurer. |
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