Having made a real effort to keep up with the furore that the chancellor created when he announced a cap on tax reliefs, I see a number of interesting points emerging. We've come to expect cries of pain from anyone who feels they are going to lose out in any new government measure, and often need to let things settle and await a more considered view. It does appear to be the case though that the measures as they stand will reduce the amounts the big givers donate to charities and some key charities that depend on a few big givers might be at risk. The Gettys and the Sainsburies and a lot of other people are weighing in with generally well considered comments.

So argument is joined. Then politicians batting for the chancellor weigh in with ill considered comments about all the money going to charities who don't actually do much charitable work. What's this all about we ask? Is the Charity Commission allowing charities to spend money on non charitable work? Who are these dodgy charities.

Well it turns out that these aren't UK charities under the microscope, but charities set up in Eastern Europe where, surprise surprise, scrutiny isn't as eagle eyed as it is over here, and charities can get away with quite a lot. Possibly it's never been an issue as there may not have been much money washing around in the charity sector in say Rumania. Now until recently you could give as much as you liked to a charity over there and HMRC will not let you gift aid it. A recent EU court judgement put paid to all that. All EU charities must be on an equal footing from a gift aid point of view. From a gift aid point of view you note, but not from a scrutiny point of view.

How this leaves the 'fit and proper person' test I'm not sure. HMRC is taking an increasingly hard line attitude to UK charities who fail to dot the i's etc.  Surely they don't allow tax payers (or their highly paid accountants) to be able to claim on gifts made to overseas charities without subjecting those charities to the same detailed scrutiny.

Rather than use the proverbial sledgehammer to damage a long list of UK charities doing such tremendous work  in so many different fields here as well as abroad, why can't HMRC use its powers and its muscle to insist that only money going to overseas charities direct from UK taxpayers can be gift aided where the charity has passed appropriate tests and is seen to be a fit and proper charity run by fit and proper persons. Is this so hard? No it isn't, just needs a bit of political will to do the right thing.

If ever we need strong UK charities it's now. It seems unwise to say the least to clobber them when the real problem is somewhere else.

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