Reforms to Community Amateur Sports Club (CASC) Legislation

HMRC undertook a review of the CASC scheme last year, culminating in a Summary of Responses, which identified the need for a number of changes. This can be found at here.

By way of a recap, in recognition of the important role played by amateur sports clubs in local communities, the Government introduced the CASC scheme in 2002. CASC status allows clubs to access some (e.g. non-domestic business rates relief, personal Gift Aid), but not all, of the benefits of charitable status without many of the accompanying administrative responsibilities.

CASCs have to register with HMRC which exercises a ‘light touch regulation’, but clubs wishing to achieve and maintain this status have to adhere strictly to specified criteria.

In summary, the new changes being made to the existing CASC scheme are:

1. Clubs will be able to charge annual membership and participation fees (which includes equipment and associated costs of playing a sport) of up to £520 a year.  Where a club charges over £520 provisions must be made for people on lower incomes in order to be considered open to the community.

1. Clubs can charge a maximum annual membership fee of £1,612 or £31 per week and be a CASC but would have to offer a range of concessionary offers to people who wish to participate but can’t afford membership at this level. Examples of these offers include:

• Open days, taster sessions and lower income packages;

• Free coaching and equipment loan;

• Discounted and concessionary membership fees, possibly including means tested membership;

• Establish  a charitable fund/bursaries to young people who may not be able to afford membership, coaching and or equipment; and

• Advertise all the opportunities and packages available to play at the club.

3. Clubs will be able to financially support players subject to a limit of £10,000 a year per club.

3. Reasonable travel and subsistence payments will now be allowed to away matches. In order to qualify for the subsistence payments (in addition to away travel expenses), club members will have to be travelling for more than 4 hours in a day.

3. Clubs can also pay expenses for tours provided sport or training is taking place on at least 75% of the days.

3. The informal 50% participating players rule will be formalised so that a club will not qualify for the CASC scheme unless it has at least 50% participating (as opposed to ‘social’) members (this will include volunteers, officials, management committee etc).

3. There will no limit on the amount of income clubs may generate from members but there will be a limit of £100,000 they can generate from trading with non-members. Clubs generating higher levels of income will need to consider setting up a trading subsidiary

3. Government will extend, for the first time corporate Gift Aid to CASCs. This represents a new source of revenue support for these clubs

3. The threshold for the exemption from tax for trading income will be increased from £30,000 to £50,000 and for rental income will be increased from £20,000 to £30,000.

3. The de-registration charge will remain if the qualifying conditions for CASC are broken.

The reliefs already offered to CASCs include exemption from 80% of business rates which remains, the right to claim gift aid on individual donations, and corporation tax exemptions of £30,000 for trading and £20,000 for rental income, both of which are increased.

Draft clauses to be included in the Finance Bill 2014 technical consultation can be found here.

The aim of this consultation process is to ensure the legislation works as intended. The technical consultation closed on 4 February 2014 and results are now awaited. The implementation of the changes is anticipated with effect from April 2014.

If you wish to discuss how the changes will impact upon your club, please contact Chris Hook using 0191 211 7801 or [email protected].