§ I turn now to charities. While people's real incomes have risen by over a third since 1979, charitable giving has more than doubled, partly as a result of the measures taken by my predecessors to encourage more giving. Tax reliefs for charities are now worth at least £800 million a year. Today I have some modest improvements to announce to the tax regime for charities.
§ I have two measures that should boost giving by businesses. The first is a new relief from income and corporation tax to encourage business gifts of equipment to schools and to other educational establishments.
§ The second concerns the gift aid scheme introduced last year. This allows companies and individuals to get tax 175 relief on cash donations to charities up to a limit of £5 million a year, under the gift aid scheme. Company groups have found that the division of this upper limit between them prevents them from donating as much as they would like. To overcome this problem, I propose to abolish the limit altogether from today. In recent years, there has been a remarkable increase in corporate donations to charities. I hope that this further measure will encourage companies to give even more.
§ I also propose to adjust some existing VAT reliefs for charities and to ease the conditions for the relief from car tax for vehicles leased to disabled people.