I have just found out that the rules relating to Community Amateur Sports Clubs have changed and existing CASCs have until April 2016 to prove they comply. One of my clubs is a CASC and I know of one other caving CASC, but are there others? This change is likely to have serious consequences for my Club so it might be good to put heads together.

A basic summary seems to be that the Club will need to be able to prove that 50% of its membership is active (which is defined as spending at least 12 days per year on the main club activity i.e. caving ... committee meetings and hut maintenance count, but socials do not). If they no longer meet this criteria, they have until April 2016 to tell HMRC and be allowed to leave (i.e. sell all their assets to a charity or another CASC) without being eligible for Capital Gains Tax.

Changes are summarised here.

Are bods from HMRC going to follow club members around to check how many times they go caving??  Can just see some suited bureaucrat with clip board stood outside Bullpot Farm (for example) asking folks who's going caving, who's planning a hut maintenance day and who's off for a pint with other club members??  :blink:

Pegasus, I think that is very unlikely but, as with anything to do with tax, if an investigation is carried out and you are found to be evading tax, the consequences can be serious. I also have a strong suspicion that this new ruling was introduced to get at rich golf clubs and the like and it is now going to have unintended consequences on others.

Thanks for the heads up on this, Damian. It sounds like yet another example of the law of unintended consequences that could be very serious for any affected clubs.

It's naive in the extreme, and very ill-advised, for anyone to make fun of this. Club officials will have to make declarations on behalf of the club in annual returns, and the consequences of making a false return are - as ever - serious where tax is concerned, and ignorance will be no defence. Clubs will have a duty to make the appropriate enquiries of their members and make the returns on that basis.

It's a bit like Stamp Duty Land Tax. It's in effect a self-certifying tax, but a random sample of returns are chosen each year for further investigation. The same will apply here, and unless a club can demonstrate appropriate due diligence and compliance, they'll be deep in the brown and smelly stuff. HMRC won't be following anyone around, they'll just be handing out the rope for other people to hang themselves with.

Thanks for the headache you've just given me Damian. That's the first I've heard of the changes and at minimum we'll have a few clauses to reword in our constitution to meet the new set of requirements. I'm sure I  sent a copy to HMRC when we registered in 2002, but it will certainly need changes to pass now. The anti-discrimination clause might trip us up. We introduced a minimum age because we didn't want to get involved in child protection legislation especially in a sport where minor injuries (eg bruises) would not be unexpected and could easily be interpreted as abuse. Any thoughts how to get round that in a HMRC acceptable way? We let members' children take part in activities provided a parent is present - is that acceptable provided we write it into our constitution?

The rules are all based around sports such as golf, football, cricket et cetera where monitoring members' activity is going to be simple compared with extracting details from our UK-wide membership - and how about our overseas members? I'll have to sit down with our membership list and club log books and see just how many of members have recorded 12 days of activity in the last year. At least we should be able to count mowing the lawn at the club hut!

McMole said:

I'll have to sit down with our membership list and club log books and see just how many of members have recorded 12 days of activity in the last year. At least we should be able to count mowing the lawn at the club hut!

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Would it be easier to ask members to make their own declaration of qualifying time spent on an annual basis when they pay their subs? I know it would be a nightmare to administrate, but the whole thing will be a nightmare, and there probably aren't any easy solutions, but that would at least put the onus on the member to supply the info rather than on you to provide a guesstimate. It would at least look like you've tried to make a reasonable attempt at a due diligence exercise.

Yes, indeed, naive in the extreme and very ill-advised.  Any more light hearted comments like that Pegasus and you'll be getting a ban.

Fred the Dog - you can rely on me not to stand up for the 'other alf' when she's clearly out of order. :halo:

Is YSS a CASC Damien?

fredthedog said:

Would it be easier to ask members to make their own declaration of qualifying time spent on an annual basis when they pay their subs? I know it would be a nightmare to administrate, but the whole thing will be a nightmare, and there probably aren't any easy solutions, but that would at least put the onus on the member to supply the info rather than on you to provide a guesstimate. It would at least look like you've tried to make a reasonable attempt at a due diligence exercise.

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I'd like to think it could be that simple, and I'll certainly try asking (before chasing) our active members. Not much point going after those who are now mostly armchair cavers. Which bring up the question of the many active cavers with memberships in several clubs. Will they report their total days per annum to all their clubs?

McMole said:

Which bring up the question of the many active cavers with memberships in several clubs. Will they report their total days per annum to all their clubs?

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That's absolutely fascinating, and I think the honest answer is that HMRC wouldn't have a clue how to deal with that scenario. It's certainly arguable that if a person is a member of multiple clubs, as many are, then the qualifying activity pertains to them, the person, and this therefore transfers to any club they are a member of, rather than being pro rataed between several clubs. If this was stamp duty land tax, it would be referred to the complex transactions unit and they wouldn't have a clue, either!

If I was having to administer this sort of dog's breakfast, I'd try for a declaration from members and totally ignore their membership of other clubs. You'd be declaring your members' activities, which is the question asked, by the look of it. the response would be true for 'your' member, the rest (probably/hopefully) isn't your problem.

Perhaps this is an area where BCA could usefully seek clarification as our national body?

Then there is a question about levels of membership, many clubs have Honorary members, are they counted?, groups like the CDG have a 'non-diving' membership, are they counted?

Found this website link that may be helpful.

http://www.cascinfo.co.uk/

Mrs Bottlebank said:

Found this website link that may be helpful.

http://www.cascinfo.co.uk/

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Blimey, this is of labyrinthine complexity!

One thing that concerns me is how the hell they're going define those 12 days. Does 1 hour of digging (oops, just typed dogging by accident! Freudian slip!) count as 1 hour or one day because you've done the activity on one day? I very much doubt the revenue have thought this through, and, as Bograt has just fagged up, how the hell are honorary members going to count? A lot of clubs have put a lot of effort into retaining non-caving members are their subs help the general running of the club without being any drain on resources, but if you're a CASC, that would count against you very badly.

It's a mess.

fredthedog said:

Perhaps this is an area where BCA could usefully seek clarification as our national body?

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Yes - I have someone working on this (virtually as I type) on BCA's behalf.

Alex said:

Is YSS a CASC Damien?

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Yes.

McMole said:

Thanks for the headache you've just given me Damian.

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Could you PM me the name of your club? Ideally I'd like to contact each Club affected and work through this together.

I've been totting up my caving trips and club meetings since 1st Feb, which is when we need to log them from, and I've got 35 caving trips collated from the club's forum that I'd been bothered enough to type up. There's at least another ten that either weren't club trips or trips I just don't want to mention at all, plus a few more too trivial to mention. Add to that 5 monthly meetings, AGM etc., and it's dead easy for me to fulfil the requirements, but then I'm mad keen (and possibly don't have much of a 'real life'?).

What worries me is the 50% of members who can't even hit 12 trips a year, or quite possibly don't even go caving at all anymore. It strikes me that if the regulations are strict enough, then to fulfil the 50% rule, clubs may have to start ejecting members who 'don't do much' in order to keep the average up. I'm not arguing that should be the case, as obviously members can grow old, infirm or just get bored of caving, but it doesn't mean they don't have any contribution to make to the overall club atmosphere. Indeed, older members are the ones clubs need to try and retain, as they are (hopefully) the ones with all the knowledge, experience and common sense.

I don't see why attending meetings, or possibly working on the club fabric or administration doesn't count though - in fact it does count. So 'non-active' members (in a caving sense) simply need to show that they are still active 'within the club' and can show twelve examples a year of that activity. If they can't, well, maybe they do need to think about why they're actually in a caving club.

As for children, this seems to be a particularly problematic area, as exclusion on age isn't allowed, but then enforced automatic CRB checks on all adult members is equally unacceptable.

Surely any club falling shy of the 50% "Active Members" could just offer free membership to active cavers from other clubs to boost their stats

I've tried calling them several times today on their number 0300 123 1073 but have not been able to get through.
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/hm-revenue-customs/contact/charities-and-community-amateur-sports-clubs-cascs

but I will try again tomorrow.

If anyone happens to get around to calling them before me...

My questions would have been around the issues of:
1) Does membership/ activity within a regional cave rescue organisation constitute club activities (as it raises the profile of the club)
2) Many members are members of a number of clubs, and as such there are blurred lines around which club their activities relate to. Is it enough just to use a log of all of the trips that they have been on (irrespective of what club)
3) Does Sitting on a regional caving body count (such as DCA, raising the profile of the club)

I would Ask 1 and 3 as these, I suppose, would be automatic qualification for the 12 trips a year (as membership of the caving clubs committee automatically gains the individual qualification for the criteria)

4) is asking a question on a clubs membership form "how many trips have you done in the last year?" enough?


Also one of our members raised a question about being thrown out of CASC for not complying. They suggested that in this instance the club would be liable for corporation tax on the property. however I am not so sure... I will need to do some digging.

5) around the issue of participation, does the participation have to be from within the club. Because many people visit our club when they come caving, either staying over or just a day trip into one of the local caves.
When they sign the book they are then known as resident members. do these count towards the overall clubs trip total?
Thereby without the existence of the club there would be x number of people not able to cave as easily as before.


As I Said before, I will try to call them this week, before I go on a caving trip to Sardinia (and the monthly meeting on Friday), If anyone else has any other questions they want to ask. please number them 6 onwards and I will do my best to ask them when I call HMRC tomorrow.

Is this another example of how caving loses out because it is a rare non-competitive sport? If a club is set up in a competitive sport, it should be pretty easy to see who is active and who is not, because, presumably, records are kept of competitions, matches, tournaments, races etc  etc.

Peter Burgess said:

Is this another example of how caving loses out because it is a rare non-competitive sport? If a club is set up in a competitive sport, it should be pretty easy to see who is active and who is not, because, presumably, records are kept of competitions, matches, tournaments, races etc  etc.

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I guess most clubs have a log book though?  We might need to ensure that we all use it!

Not sure I could tell you how many trips I've done in the last 12 months as I don't log them.
Would a better question be something like "Have you done 12 or more days caving in the last year? Yes/No".
I could answer that easily!