Tech Forum

For people in the UK who are paying Tithing via "Gift Aid" you might find this "Tithing Calculator" useful:

http://bit.ly/tithingslip

The web page has purposely been designed to be accessible on a smartphone.

The link on the page also takes you to the church's UK page with all the information about paying via Gift Aid (including information about how to pay via online banking).

This is a great idea thank you and looks good on a smartphone. On future versions, tt would be great to include a box for the amount you can reclaim if you pay a higher tax rate of 40% and tweak to include the changes from 06 April 2011, eg. 20% Tax rebate.

2MyCloud wrote:This is a great idea thank you and looks good on a smartphone. On future versions, tt would be great to include a box for the amount you can reclaim if you pay a higher tax rate of 40% and tweak to include the changes from 06 April 2011, eg. 20% Tax rebate.

I WILL make the changes from 6 April once it is officially announced what the change will be.

With the 40% higher tax rate then the reason I have not included it is because in order to get that then you have to reclaim that personally on your self-assessment.
The specific aim of this one was to help people fill out their gift aid tithing slip which will be submitted to the Solihull office and they will only reclaim of the basic rate band.

I could think about checking the wage people put in and then give info/warning further down if their earnings are too low to quality or if they might be able to reclaim some more themselves. I am a little hesitant about the latter since there is a difference between what is taxable income and what is gross income and what individuals base their tithing calculation on. BUT I will have a good think about that. Any ideas would be welcome.

Glad you liked it, feel free to share it.

The other reason for doing it is to spread the word more about the "Gift Aid" option. It is still surprising to see people who are not aware of it.

2MyCloud wrote:This is a great idea thank you and looks good on a smartphone. On future versions, tt would be great to include a box for the amount you can reclaim if you pay a higher tax rate of 40% and tweak to include the changes from 06 April 2011, eg. 20% Tax rebate.

I have now included support for the 40% Tax Band as well as a potential warning if the person is not earning enough. I say potential as I am only catering for people on standard tax rates.

This calculator will assume you enter gross wage amount and tithing is based on this as well.

Thank you for making this available. One small suggestion, would it be possible to change the word Wage to Income.

or even 'Increase' - if we are to be truly compliant

cottrells wrote:Thank you for making this available. One small suggestion, would it be possible to change the word Wage to Income.

Done.

dannykos wrote:or even 'Increase' - if we are to be truly compliant

By saying "Income" I think it is more clear about what I mean as we are talking Gross Income and we are also trying slightly to deal with tax bands and tax allowance based on PAYE income. Since I only cope with people who pay tithing on the gross then I am not truly compliant there either

Next step I guess would be to enhance it and include details of how I have calculated it all as I have already had a couple of people asking why their 40% is lower than they thought and the reason was because they can only reclaim up to the max of what they have paid in that tax band. So on £44k a year you dont actually pay very much tax at 40% and therefore cannot reclaim much extra at that rate and it is only the difference between what the church reclaim (22%) and the 40% in total so you only get 18% extra.

kennethjorgensen wrote:For people in the UK who are paying Tithing via "Gift Aid" you might find this "Tithing Calculator" useful:

http://bit.ly/tithingslip

The web page has purposely been designed to be accessible on a smartphone.

The link on the page also takes you to the church's UK page with all the information about paying via Gift Aid (including information about how to pay via online banking).

Pardon my ignorance, but why is 10% not 10% in the UK?

allenjpl wrote:Pardon my ignorance, but why is 10% not 10% in the UK?

It is. Check that you've taken into account the two drop down selections for Income and Paid.
The default is Income yearly and paid monthly. If you enter Income 20,000 and then "Calc Tithing" the figure returned is 166.67 which when multiplied by 12 = 2000.04 a touch over the 10% expected.

What figures/selection did you use that didn't produce the expected 10%?

cottrells wrote:What figures/selection did you use that didn't produce the expected 10%?

I have to admit, I'm kind of puzzled too. I guess my question is, what else is going on to make it necessary to use a calculator? I'm ignorant of the factors behind this.