About corporate structures
Some charity structures are corporate bodies. If you choose a structure that forms a corporate body, the law considers your charity to be a person in the same way as an individual.
This gives your charity the legal capacity to do many things in its own name that a person can do, such as:
- employing paid staff
- delivering charitable services under contractual agreements
- entering into commercial contracts in its own name
- owning freehold or leasehold land or other property
If a charity structure is a corporate body, generally its trustees aren’t personally liable for what it does.
If your charity isn’t a corporate body (‘unincorporated’):
- the trustees are personally liable for what it does
- it won’t be able to enter into contracts or control some investments in its own name
- two or more trustees, a corporate custodian trustee or the charities’ land holding service will have to ‘hold’ any land on your charity’s behalf
Tax codes that are applied on a cumulative basis means that tax calculations look at the entire tax year when performing the tax calculation. Using a tax code on a cumulative basis means that every payday, the calculation performed is to work out the tax due on an employee’s earnings for the (tax) year to date then deduct from it the tax they have already paid on their earnings that (tax) year. The remaining figure is the tax due for the pay period.
Is your group run by a management committee? Then you need to be aware that you hold the same responsibilities as a charity trustee when handling money that does not belong to you personally.
Minimum Contribution Rates for Workplace Pensions are changing