North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

Yes, the charge over assets held by the NYMR's lending bank has for a long time been supported by a cross guarantee from the Trust. The security protects the overdraft facility, which like many seasonal businesses is essential to cover cash outflows during the lean winter months, together with long term loans which have been significamtly reduced over recent years. The report and accounts for the financial year about to end will show the updated position.

 

I know too little of the Ffestiniog to comment, but will observe that a feature of the changes in NYMR is a change in the operation of democracy.

 

The Gift Aid rules for entry into charity property are clear that you cannot compel anyone into agreeing to sign up for Gift Aid, i.e. whatever you get in exchange for your donation also has to be available to anyone else on the same terms.

It is also the case that for all those organisations I looked at (and there are plenty more), the terms and conditions did not distinguish between "Gift Aid" and "non-Gift Aid" visitors.

One interpretation of that (IANAL) is that actually in all cases, you aren't paying an admission to visit those attractions, but are always making a donation. It's just for some people, there is the opportunity for that donation to be enhanced by recovering Gift Aid.

If that interpretation is correct then with regard the CRA, it doesn't come into play, since there is no contract. In other words, this isn't like buying a ticket to a football match or concert, but is always an opportunity to observe the work of a charity in exchange for a donation.

Tom

 

My post was more about the *way* that members were posting, rather than the subject matter. They could all be a bit more "kind and thoughtful" (to use your words) rather than constantly challenging.

 

Thank you. So the Trust has not been reporting this guarantee in its accounts hitherto?

 

I understand the argument but the suggestion that everyone who pays to visit is just making a donation is stretching the basic principles of contract law beyond credulity.

 

It may, but English law is known for the use of legal fictions. It would be interesting to know what has been said by trade organisations in the museums and stately homes sector about this, and how that might inform railways.

 

The situation at the end of the 2023/4 Financial Year is explained in Note 18 of the audited consolidated accounts.

 

Yes, but to be honest the whole structure of allowing recovery of Gift Aid when visiting a property is a bit of a stretch. Once you accept that for some visitors, the entire amount they hand over is treated as a donation for the purposes of recovering Gift Aid, then why shouldn't all visitor transactions be treated the same way, regardless of the Gift Aid position?

I've always found it odd, since clearly if I visit a property, I am getting something of value back to me. (Whereas my general feeling about a donation is that I get nothing back except a warm fuzzy feeling). But if you accept that for some visitors that the law considers what you have handed over to be a donation, then it is not stretching things any further to assume that is the case for everyone.

Tom

 

Yes Tom I think it is. Interestingly I've now had confirmation that if a Gift Aiding passenger receives compensation or a refund the NYMR does not make a claim for Gift Aid recovery on that transaction. It seems that its obligations under Gift Aid rules and the 2015 Consumer Rights Act are both being met.

 

That seems reasonable to me and should work in my opinion on the assumption that the refund is made before the GA Claim to HMRC is made. As I stated earlier, in the unlikely event that this happens after the claim has been made then it would be reasonable to make an adjustment in a later GA Claim.

The fundamental difference to me is that the admission GA 'loophole' for admission to heritage properties is different for (say) a static Stately Home to a heritage railway operating a timetabled service where delay repay or CRA refunds are potentially possible.

I also thank lineisclear for replies and contributions to this thread.

 

The Naval Museum comment on repaying donations brought me up short - there's a point there about trustees' powers that made me want to consider my practice on the donations that I help administer, as it suggests a flat contradiction between charity (and not just tax) law and the practical commercial arrangement being proposed.

 

But, if what the Royal Naval Museum states is correct, not charity law.

 

As myself a trustee for a small charity which reclaims Gift Aid on membership subscriptions (from those members who have made GA declarations), it has been my understanding that we are limited in the benefits that we are allowed to provide to those members. I find remarkable the provision that the whole of a payment for admittance to an attraction counts as a donation if it is 10% more than the standard payment. I find it even more remarkable that the standard payment counts as a donation if it gets the additional benefit of a year's free admission. I am quite bemused as to how the Powers That Be came to make those rules, but those are the rules and they do seem inevitably to lead to the apparent conflict with consumer law that is being discussed here.

As one colleague used to say to me "The trouble is, you're trying to apply logic to it".

 

To repeat myself, it's a concession granted by HMRC as a way of stuffing a loophole.

 

? Assuming we are looking at the same set of accounts, Note 18 says nothing about a guarantee having been given of certain of the plc's obligations, it seems to be a selective summary of certain of the charges given, and would in any case be a non-intuitive place to put this as this section is headed "fixed assets". The obvious place would be Note 32, contingent libailities, in explicit terms (rather than Note 23 where the plc guarantee is referred to) unless one wanted to create a separate section to deal with this.

 

I would disagree with your point of view. The whole gift aid debate is highly relevant as less than a year ago this was being seen as not perhaps the silver bullet to help the HR movement, but something it seems could have been a big help to many. I was very impressed that the NYMR and taken the effort to go down this path and get it through HMRC.
However what has become apparent is that most of us have learnt a lot about Gift Aid, one area of the Consumer Law Act of 2015 and the fact, it would appear (at least to me) that we have a Heritage Line offering more to its passengers than you would get on the National Network. Although to be fair the way some TOC's appear to behave towards whatever we are now supposed to call passengers (them?) astounds me.
I am sure if this discussion does nothing it will have made a few people think.
Gift Aid was one of those things that over the years I have signed some random piece of paper and moved on. Pay more and someone gets more was about the way it had ever been described to me. I never realised there could have also been a tax benefit to me as well, I have never kept any records of GA donations. My wife signed us up for NT membership about 10 years ago, none of that for example has ever been GA'd. I guess most people like me "did not get it", I do however remember my wife's accountant telling her to "never do gift aid". That stuck, although looking back now it was probably as the business was not doing well and she was not paying any tax.
You seem to want to stifle debate, maybe that is the way your employer conducts business, or like mine claimed to want input from all, but really wanted nothing to do with it.
I do not agree with some of @Lineisclear says, and sometimes as I have mentioned the views appear "to Corporate" for a small (although large by HR standards) Business. But he is explaining why decisions were made or things work the way we do. Just because that it has it is now can make it right, but equally wrong.
At the end of the day, it is I guess moot to me as a non member, so of great interest but I have no vested interest, at least as it impacts the NYMR,but it is up to you of course if you want to tell me where to stick my opinions.

 

You did, in post#4700.

It does indeed make sense that counting an admission payment (without any extras) as a donation qualifying for Gift Aid was anomalous, conflicting with the basic principle of limits to the benefits that one can receive in exchange for a Gift Aided donation. As a way of resolving the anomaly, asking the customer for a small extra as a donation on which GA can be claimed would have made sense but would have brought in very little. Asking the customer for a small extra and then being allowed to claim GA on the whole amount makes less sense and brings in the conflict with consumer law. Allowing GA on just the basic price if the customer is given a major additional benefit makes the original anomaly much worse. The law is indeed an ass.

 

It may well be, and I've commented at greater length before post #4700. The point about the greater additional benefit is to make the charity think about what it's asking - because in granting re-admission, it is constraining itself (which as it happens is where the whole NYMR debate on the approach to Gift Aided ticketing comes in).

However, I have always taken the view that "the customer is always right, especially when wrong", and that works for law too.

This contortion having been introduced to deal with a genuinely tricky anomaly, I can't accept the accuracy of the assertions from logic being presented as to how the anomaly resolves. While I could quite easily spin up that logic myself, and would be more than happy to argue that it is how things ought to be, I can't take the extra step of saying that they are that way without conclusive authority from either formal HMRC guidance or persuasive judgment(s) from a tax tribunal or higher courts.

None have been cited, and I've done enough digging on HMRC website for info to believe that the Gift Aid guidance in this area has remained unchanged. That suggests to me that @Lineisclear is advancing an arguable opinion, which a court might choose to accept, and our elected representatives would do well to resolve*, but which were I a trustee would hesitate to adopt due to the costs of even a successful legal process.

* - entirely separately, I would also be reluctant to press Parliament to resolve this. It would be very easy for HMRC and the Treasury to decide to resolve the issue by either revoking the concession (bad) or cutting back Gift Aid in general (a lot worse) and, as a narrowly technical piece of legislation, this is the kind of thing that a combination of a heavily whipped parliament and MPs' repeated failure to scrutinise primary legislation rather than whinge like hell when it actually comes into force means would be liable to slip through.

 

I don't think anyone has been disrespectful to Lineisclear. The forum exists for discussion and this is a discussion that is relevant to most if not all heritage railways. If I take a viewpoint X and pronounce it as the best model for business, then I would expect others to challenge me and say 'but have you considered how that might affect Y' That is what the discussion is about.