At its recent meeting in York, General Synod reconfirmed its challenge to church members to assess annually their financial giving as a proportion of income and to adopt as an initial target the giving of 5% of their after-tax income to and through the Church, and a similar amount to other work that helps to build God's kingdom; and commended the Giving for Life guide to parishes and dioceses/deaneries for prayerful discussion and action. The full text of Giving for Life is downloadable from www.cofe.anglican.org/about/gensynod/agendas/july09/gs1723.pdf
The latest information provided by Church House suggests that nationally the giving of members averages 3.4% of net income with Chelmsford Diocese in a mid-table position at 3%. Can this calculation be reproduced without getting into too much arithmetic detail?
HM Revenue and Customs publishes annually the numbers and average gross earnings of people liable to tax in each local authority district. We can convert these earnings to net income. We also know the total number of adults in each district so can work out how many don't pay tax and assume their average net income equals the current personal tax allowance. A fairly straightforward calculation then combines this data to give the average net income for all adults in each district. As might be expected from the differences noted last month there is a significant variation in incomes between the districts served by the Chelmsford Diocese. These are illustrated in the bar chart which is for the tax year 2006-7.
Some districts have very much larger adult populations than others and, taking this into account using a weighted average, we get an average net income of £16,500 pa across the diocese.
In 2007 the income received by our PCCs from giving was an estimated £19,699,000. This includes Gift Aid and the tax recovered, other planned giving, collections and all forms of donation. At the same time there were 39,180 members, who, assuming a net income of £16,500 each, had income totalling 39,180 x £16,500 = £646,470,000.
The percentage of this income given to PCCs is therefore £19,699,000 / £646,470,000 = 3.04% which is reassuring close to the 3% estimated by the National Church. Next month we'll see how much of the 3% is for general purposes.