As advised in Issue 1: Governance, during the course of advising charities and not-for-profit (NFP) organisations over many years, we have noticed some common issues that are important to our clients. Over the next few months, we will continue to run a series of short summaries of those legal issues that every charity and not-for-profit organisation should consider.
This month we will deal with the topic of charitable tax concessions.
Charities and some NFP organisations may be entitled to receive a range of Federal and State tax concessions. It is important that you are familiar with these so you can take advantage of them. This may enable your organisation to free up capital to spend on your charitable or NFP objectives.

If your organisation is a charity it must be registered with the ACNC in order to be eligible to be endorsed by the ATO for Federal tax concessions.
In order to make sure your organisation is registered and endorsed for all the tax concessions that it is entitled to we recommend you consider the following:
Have you checked which Commonwealth tax concessions your organisation is currently endorsed to receive?
Click here for the ABN lookup.

Is your organisation registered as a charity with the ACNC? If so, it may be eligible to be endorsed for:
* Income tax exemption
* Goods and Services Tax (GST) concessions
* Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT) rebate
We recommend that all charities seek the above tax concessions.

Is your charity or NFP entitled to be endorsed for Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) status?
DGR status is not available to all registered charities, only some limited categories of charities and NFP organisations are eligible to be endorsed to offer DGR receipts to donors. This is a very sought after tax status that is worth investigating. Click here to view ATO’s DGR table.

If your charity or NFP is endorsed with DGR status, is it entitled to receive and registered for FBT exemptions?
We note these are more lucrative than the FBT rebate.

Is your charity or NFP entitled to receive State, Territory or local government tax concessions? 
These are in addition to Federal tax concessions and may include stamp duty (a tax paid on some financial and property transactions), payroll tax (a tax on wages which exceed a certain threshold), land tax, and rates concessions (for local government council rates).

Your charity or NFP organisation may also be entitled to receive other tax concessions so please do not hesitate to contact us with any queries related to tax concessions that you might have.