Most small clubs probably assume that they have no liability for Corporation Tax. After all, they are mostly unincorporated associations and this is ‘corporation tax’. Sadly wrong. We have included here an excellent paper from Law in Sport (Corporation Tax (CT) – a paper prepared by Richard Baldwin, MBE; FCA; CTA; B.Com) which provides a great deal of detail which we would urge club treasurers to read.
Here, we reproduce the information available on the Gov.UK website (as at 8 November 2017 – check for updates), starting from https://www.gov.uk/corporation-tax. We have also included the Gov.uk pages on Community Amateur Sports Clubs and on Charitable Status but we suspect these will have limited application.
We cannot provide specific advice on whether clubs should contact HMRC about their particular situation. We can only quote from the Gov.UK website and urge you to read Richard Baldwin’s paper.
It seems to us that the key is if a club is receiving income other than membership fees or if it disposes of any assets for more than they cost, you should consider seeking appropriate professional advice.