HMRC Grant Funding 2016 - 2019

Overview

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) will allocate a guaranteed £1.5m per year over the next 3 years to the voluntary and community sector (VCS) to support our customers who need extra help understanding and complying with their tax obligations and claiming their entitlements, including those who are currently digitally excluded.

HMRC are looking for VCS organisations to help customers to form or rebuild a relationship with HMRC that enables them to engage directly with us in the future.

They invite bids for funding of between £10,000 and £450,000 per annum, with a maximum threshold set at 50% of your organisation’s turnover (last audited accounts).

They will only accept one bid per organisation.

Bids should include one or more of the following activities:

Advice and supprt: Providing advice and support for HMRC’s customers who need extra help and cannot afford to pay for it.

Digital inclusion: Assisting customers who are digitally excluded, to build their confidence and capability to use HMRC’s online services for themselves’.

Specialist support and referrals: Providing specialist advice and taking referrals by telephone or email from HMRC’s extra help service, and assisting customers who need independent advice and support with more complex tax issues, for example complicated PAYE issues, or claims for Special Relief and appeals. Your organisation would require the infrastructure and capability to handle in the region of 700 referrals per year, and would be responsible for bringing individual cases to conclusion.

HMRC Strategic Funding Aims

Digital services: HMRC’s aim is to provide more of our services digitally. We are looking for organisations to support that aim and help our customers with new ways of working.

Customers who need extra help: Their grant funding programme aligns to HMRC’s customer strategy. We are looking for organisations that provide advice and support to those customers who, for various reasons, need extra help at some point in their lives when interacting with HMRC.

Designing services to meet customer needs: To help HMRC identify and reduce barriers for our hard-to-reach and vulnerable customers to improve their customer experience. Making it easier for intermediaries, including those in the VCS, to engage with us on a customer’s behalf.

Efficiency and productivity: The government is seeking sustainable cost savings across all departments and we need to ensure that we allocate our funding efficiently to achieve the best outcomes for our customers.

Eligibility criteria

You will need to confirm that you satisfy all of the following criteria to be eligible to apply for grant funding from HMRC.

Your organisation must be one of the following:

• registered charity
• voluntary and community sector organisation
• social enterprise
• mutual
• co-operative

Your organisation must have 3 years of financial history in place.

Your organisation must have a turnover of no less than £40,000 per annum.

No directors within your organisation to have been disqualified in the last 5 years.

No director, trustee, treasurer or anyone in a position of financial responsibility to have had a relevant conviction, such as for fraud, within the last 3 years.

You must have sound and comprehensive financial systems and processes that enable you to track the amount of funding spent throughout the year, and demonstrate that you have allocated the funding to the specific activity detailed in your bid.

You are able to identify customers who have HMRC-related issues and be competent to help them with one or more HMRC services, for example:

• Tax (PAYE and Self Assessment)
• Working Tax Credits
• Child Tax Credits
• Child Benefit

You must have in place an infrastructure for monitoring and evaluating that is capable of reporting agreed outcomes; ie the impact on your clients and that your outcomes represent value for money.

No aspect of the activity funded by this grant may be party-political in intention, use or presentation.

Who HMRC want to help

Your organisation must be able to help HMRC customers in these groups, who also display one or more of the following characteristics:

• they are experiencing difficulties accessing HMRC services, due to illness, disability or digital exclusion
• they lack confidence, and are overly worried about making mistakes or are new to HMRC services
• they lack the ability to deal with tasks, for example, due to learning difficulties, memory problems, lack of language skills to be able to understand the tax system, complex working situations or several income strands
• they have mental health issues or are suffering extreme distress through life events, such as bereavement or the breakdown of a relationship

The grant cannot be used to support or promote religious activity.