Charity Law

After setting up your organisation depending on your legal structure, it may be possible to register for charitable status. Charities exist to relieve poverty, advance religion and education or other purposes which benefits the community. A trust, unincorporated association, CLG, CLS, industrial/provident society can all have charitable status.

An application must be made to the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) to achieve charitable status. The organisation must be established with charitable aims and profits must not be paid out to members but to be invested back into the charity to achieve its goals.

There are Income tax and VAT reliefs available to charities which may appeal to social enterprises. Although a charity may be restricted to trading activities that fulfil their primary purpose, it is possible to generate more profit for the charity using trading activities that are more flexible such as setting up a trading subsidiary.

If you require any assistance with charity set up, accounting, financial or tax issues or trading subsidiaries please do not hesitate to contact us.