Gift Aid - events & benefit to donor

[Incredulum]

A charity has a fund-raising lunch. Tickets are £50. The cost of the food provided is £5.

Can the ticket price be gift-aided?

Guidance is less clear than mud - see: https://www.gov.uk/gift-aid-what-donati ... n-claim-on

Where they state under the heading "The Benefit Rule":

1. The value of a benefit is always the value to the recipient, not the cost to your charity or CASC. For most benefits, the value is simply the retail value of the item or service.

So in my example, the value of the benefit is £50.

The always in the above is immediately contradicted in the subsequent paragraph.

2. Where a benefit is attendance at an event that is not open to the public, the value of the benefit is the cost of the event divided by the number of guests.

So we're back to £5 which is below the threshold for 25% of the value of the donation, so it becomes gift-aidable. But then read on further to the section entitled: "Charity events" - which surely are "attendance at an event not open to the public" as described above and the following contradiction appears:

3. If you sell tickets to an event you’ve organised, eg a concert or fundraising dinner, payment does not qualify for Gift Aid. Even if the ticket price is higher than the cost of the event, the money made from ticket sales counts as profit and not a donation.

So we're back to £50. I'm confused...

s417-421 of ITA '07 give us no help, though Butterworths sends us to Simons Taxes E1.811 which is no help at all.

The CIOT at http://www.tax.org.uk/gift-aid repeat the valuation point: "Where a benefit has no market comparison the method of valuation may be made by taking the cost to the charity of creating it - for example when an event is staged that is not open to the general public the benefit might be determined by taking the cost divided by the number of expected attendees."

All views gratefully received, thanks.