Community Amateur Sports Club Consultation 

HMRC recently launched a public Consultation on the Community Amateur Sports Club (CASC) scheme.

HMRC recently launched a public Consultation on the Community Amateur Sports Club (CASC) scheme. The document can be found on the HMRC website and will run until 12 August.

We cannot stress how important this Consultation is both for existing CASC registered clubs and for clubs that may be thinking of registering as a CASC now or in the future.

Be aware of the possible implications

Clubs should be aware of the possible implications of some of the government's proposals that have been outlined in the document.

• Critically the Consultation raises two key eligibility conditions that previously have not been a major consideration when allowing clubs into the scheme:
  • Level of membership fees - HMRC is proposing a cap on membership fee levels (including all participation costs such as the cost of equipment such as boats, buoyancy aids etc.) above which a club will have to make provisions to ensure that its fees are still affordable to everyone in the community.
  • Level of social (i.e. non-sporting) income - This will effectively limit the amount of social income (e.g. bar and restaurant income, venue hire etc.) that can be generated by a club, although ultimately there should be the option to establish a trading subsidiary to enable all clubs to remain in the scheme.
• There is a very real possibility that clubs will be adversely affected by these two proposals.
• Clubs should also be aware of plans to define a social member and a guest for the purposes of the scheme.
• The proposals to allow more generous travel expenses and to formalise small payments to players are positive developments, however, they may not have any real meaning for our sport. The proposals to allow Gift Aid on corporate donations and to increase the trading income threshold for Corporation Tax are positive developments which we can welcome.

Information from you

In order to provide a meaningful response to the Consultation as your NGB we would be grateful if you could provide us by email responses to the following questions:

• The cost of membership at your club, broken down to include joining fee / membership fee / cost of participation (e.g. hire of boats / average cost of purchasing own boat / buoyancy aids etc.) / charges for using facilities / sailing fees and any other costs associated with participating (e.g. mooring charges).
• Whether your club provides club owned boats for use by members and if so the cost attached. Whether your club organises boat use between boat owning members and non-boat owning members, or perhaps even from other clubs.
• Whether there are any arrangements in place to subsidise the cost of being a member (e.g. offering members on low income reduced or even free membership rates / reduced rates for restricted access).
• The percentage of social members and whether or not social members actually take part in sailing or are they purely 'social' members.
• How often do your members participate in your club's sporting activities.
• Whether your club has restrictions on the number of guests a member can introduce and the number of times a year such guests may be permitted access to the club's facilities.
• Whether your club has an alcohol licence.

Please email legal@rya.org.uk as soon as you can.

Options for testing income generation by clubs

Government is intent on striking a balance between clubs generating a bit of income for the club to help subsidise membership whilst ensuring they are not really trading commercially as a bar or restaurant with a side team of sailors. It therefore intends on setting a limit on the level of non-sporting income a club may generate; of which it has proposed 4 options and we should like to know which, if any, would suit your club:

• OPTION 1 - members income test. No limits on income raised from members regardless of whether income related to sporting or non -sporting activities. There would however be a limit on the income raised from non-members e.g. 20% of turnover from non-members capped at £50,000. This is government's preferred option.
• OPTION 2 - basic income test. This would limit the turnover from non-sporting activities set at a proportion of the total income of a club e.g. 30% capped at £100,000. If government elects this option it will need to define 'sporting' and 'non-sporting' income.
• OPTION 3 - different levels for different sorts of income e.g. food & drink say 30% of total income / hiring of facilities say 20% / all other non-sporting income say 20%
• OPTION 4 - days open test. This would ignore the amount and nature of income instead it would look at when the facilities were available for use. If the bar is open to members and guests during and after sailing income generated is likely to be considered as 'incidental' to the promotion of sport. There would be a limit of say 10 days a year when a club bar could be open to members and guests when there was no sailing or training. In addition to allow for more general fund raising the club could open say 5 days a year to non-members.

We hope to be able to publish draft guidance on how to complete the Consultation on the CASC page of the club section our website within the next two weeks.

The point of doing so is to try to ensure that sailing provides a broadly consistent, coherent and good quality response on some of the key issues. However, it is essential that clubs provide additional supplementary views and evidence to back up the potential detrimental effect of the proposals, particularly the level of membership fees and social (i.e. non-sporting) income). HMRC Officials have also been at pains to point out that they are very keen to receive any additional suggestions and ideas from stakeholders, above and beyond those set out in the document, on how the issues could be addressed.

The Consultation document represents the culmination of two and a half years of work by the RYA and other sports including the Sport and Recreation Alliance. We have worked with HMRC over this period in an effort to iron out some of the technical issues that have been hampering the scheme.

Broadly speaking we would have welcomed HMRC's decision to revisit the CASC legislation, however, we feel that HMRC has not taken into account the needs of our sport and indeed sport across the sector and we feel that the proposals put forward in this Consultation document may mean that the scheme is no longer suitable for our clubs. However, it is necessary to make the most of this opportunity to ensure our concerns are heard and indeed help to shape future CASC policy.