HMRC has given five charities an extension to filing their gift aid claims online after the new Charities Online service went live last month.

Peter Mills, Charities Online programme manager told the Charity VAT and Tax Conference this week that 14 charities had made appeals ahead of the 30 September deadline to start using the new system for claiming gift aid.

Mills said: 'Nine have been sorted without a problem and five have been given an extension because of their exceptional circumstances, but there will be no general extension.'

To date, 40,000 charities have registered to use the system, and Mills explained that many will not have needed to do so yet because '60% of organisations file once a year'. Most of them (80%) are using the spreadsheet option, with 10% opting to file via their databases and 10% using the new paper form.

HMRC is anticipating that 70,000 charities will be registered for Charities Online by next September, a year after the deadline for switching.