Charitable Purposes Flashcards
Advantages to charitable status
- Tax
- trust law advantages
- policing and advice
Decision making bodies
Courts
HM Revenue & Customs
Local Government Rating Departments
Charity Commission
Methodology for CC
1) analysis by looking at existing charitable purposes
2) social and economic concerns (they don’t do this)
3) purposes and activities
Rules on Charitable Status
1) LEGALLY CHARITABLE PURPOSE
2) PUBLIC BENEFIT REQUIREMENT
Morice v Bishop of Durham
Popular notions of charity are not relevant
- what an individual thinks is charitable aren’t necessarily legally charitable
Lord Eldon, charitable purposes are:
- Relief of the indigent (in various ways, money, provisions, education, medical assistance)
- The advancement of learning
- The advancement of religion
- The advancement of objects of general public utility (most difficult)
Commissioners for the Special Purpose of Income Tax v PEMSEL
Lord McNaughton confirmed 4 principles stated in Morice
4 divisions:
- Trusts for relief of poverty,
- Trusts for advancement of religion,
- Trusts for the advancement of education, and
- Trusts for other purposes beneficial to the community, not falling under any of the preceding heads
Pemsel - codification by statute (s.3)
13 charitable purposes in s.3 - took the 3 pemsel heads even further it, and split 4th into 10 new heads, including residual category for anything else analogous
- S.3(1)a recognises ‘prevention of poverty’ but Pemsel states only ‘relief’ of poverty
- S.3(2)(a)ii defines “religion” to include “a religion which does not involve belief in a god”, whereas previous decisions defined religion to mean belief in a god
- S.3(2)d defines sport to include “sports or games which promote health by involving… mental skill or exertion”, but previous cases held that sporting purposes had to involve physical effort and skill
BENEFITING SIGNIFICANT SECTION OF COMMUNITY
Pre-Charities Act -
Oppenheim v Tobacco Securities Trust - personal nexus test
Charities Act - Charities act 2006 tried to eradicate the second sense of the test (aka public benefit), but that is based on a mistaken view of common law
- so it is uncertain
EXCLUSIVELY CHARITABLE
if property can be used for purposes that aren’t charitable it is a non-charitable trust (even if property may be applied exclusively for purposes that are charitable)
A-G of the Cayman Islands v Wahr-Hansen
National Anti-Vivisection Society
political purposes are not charitable in english law
because:
ONE – courts have no means of judging whether a proposed change in the law would or would not be for public benefit
TWO – law cannot stultify itself by holding that it is the public benefit that law should be changed (inappropriate for court to usurp legislature)
THREE – the proper of requiring AG to enforce a political trust
Re Nivazi’s WT
a gift (about £15,000) to “construction of, or as a contribution towards the construction of a working men’s hostel” = charitable because of grave housing shortage in that area
Dingle v Turner
Trusts for relief of poverty (but not elderly or ill persons) = EXCEPTION to normal principle that people benefiting from charitable trust must not be for a private class of individuals defined by reference to a personal nexus with a particular person
so you can have relations to a named individual, or poor employees of a particular employer
AG v Charity Commission
Upper Tribunal held 2006 act had not changed common law of Dingle v Turner
Re Shaw
Denied charitable status to Shaw who had bequeathed funds for pursuing inquiries into a new 40 letter alphabet
research not education
Re Hopkin’s WT
Wilberforce J held the word ‘education’ used by Harman J in Re Shaw must be used in a wide sense, “certainly beyond teaching”
