Keith Wallace discusses new requirements for charities when reporting annual returns
You’d be surprised if the Land Registry asked you to report the colour of your staircase carpet or Companies House demanded you tell them the number of sausages your business made.
One expects the keeper of a register to, well, maintain the register. Yet this concept does not apply to charities nor to the ever-increasing volume of information you’re required to furnish in your Annual Return.
Sir John Stebbings, Law Society President in 1980 famously said ‘behind every charity you’ll find a solicitor, helping out’ so it’s worth alerting practitioners to the emerging problems.
For those 169,000 charities under the Charity Commission purview, annual accounts are filed (tiddlers are not o...
“Trustee donations are often a rescue package of last resort; the officeholders put in their own cash to save the good work.”
