Calculating a Charity's Income
Income of a charity
The income of a charity is the amount by which the total of the amounts it received in the taxation year exceeds the total expenditures it incurred to obtain the amounts.
Income includes gifts the charity received, other than:
- designated gifts;
- gifts of capital received by way of bequest or inheritance;
- gifts received subject to a stipulation that the property in question (or substituted property) must be held for at least 10 years;
- gifts received by a religious order, or the body that administers the property of a religious order, if the gifts are made by a member of the religious order who has taken a vow of perpetual poverty;
- gifts received from another charity, where they are reported by the donor as designated gifts, or do not constitute income of the donor;
- gifts for which the charity did not and will not issue official receipts, for example:
- gifts from tax-exempt donors,
- gifts from anonymous donors,
- amounts from collection boxes.
Income of a museum, a cultural or communications organization or a political education organization
The income of a museum, a cultural or communications organization or a political education organization corresponds to the amount by which the organization's total revenue exceeds the total expenditures incurred to obtain the revenue, assuming the organization did not realize a capital gain or sustain a capital loss (amount from line 22 of the return).
Note
- If an organization conducted fundraising activities or engaged a third party to do so on its behalf, the organization must declare in its information return all the fundraising methods it used during the taxation year.
- If gifts or revenue were in foreign currency, you must convert them to Canadian dollars, using the exchange rate in effect at the time the gift or revenue was received.