Charity Law

With the help of our specialist charity law team, you can ensure your chosen charity beneficiaries reap the rewards of your hard work and boost their annual income.

The charity sector faces many pressures and has increasingly come under spotlight in recent times. With fierce competition from rivals, a tougher fundraising environment and the need to improve the transparency of charitable spend, more charities are looking for donations from individuals instead.

What is charity law?

Charity law covers the rules, regulations and tax implications of establishing and operating charities and not-for-profit organisations. Sitting within the private client team, our charity lawyers focus primarily on those who donate to charities, ensuring that both the donor and the charity itself are able to benefit from the donation as much as possible.

Expert charity law solicitors

Our charity solicitors can guide you through the process of giving back to a cause you believe in, ensuring that you’re aware of the various tax benefits of donating to a charity in the UK.

The charity law team can also help you in a number of other ways:

• We assist you with the creation of charitable trusts to ensure that you remain in control of your philanthropic activities.
• We also help with the ongoing administration process, satisfy compliance needs, prepare annual accounts and devise tailored charitable structures when needed.

From small to large charitable contributions, we provide advisers who can assess your entire approach to wealth planning.

Why choose Shakespeare Martineau?

As a leading law firm with specialists in charity law, we are well placed to guide you through the giving process - whether this is your first donation or just one of many you’ve made over the course of your life.

Our charity solicitors also have extensive experience in advising charities. We can support clients with making tax-efficient donations, offering you unparalleled insight into the laws surrounding charitable donations and tax in the UK.

Our approach

We can also help to maximise the financial contributions received by charities from your donations – leaving more in their pocket, and less subjected to steep tax penalties.

Supporting your activity through the creation and administration of charitable trusts ensures that we can help you to help others. In the process, you can reduce your potential exposure to Inheritance Tax and Capital Gains Tax.

We ensure that your activity benefits exactly who you intend, while supporting you to limit your tax liabilities where possible.

The way we help you

Taking the time to fully understand your generous wishes in our initial consultation, we will ensure that we can advise you on the best way to structure and approach your charitable affairs going forward.

This could include lifetime gifting, charity commission regulation, tax implications and trustee duties.