The Man From DSD

Today feels like a day of breakthrough and blessing.

We finally got our meeting with the man from the Dept of Social Development (DSD) and to cut a long story short, he now works for The Gathering in a consultancy capacity. This is a huge blessing.

Thank you LORD!

As many of you are aware, we have been struggling to get tax exemption in the form a Section 18a (S18) certificate from the South African Revenue Service (SARS) for about two years. However, what we didn't know was that it is never going to happen as things stand!

The Gathering first registered as a Non Profit Organisation (NPO) in 2016 using the Voluntary Association (VA) route.  Then as we grew and church finances grew, especially as we want to buy the building, we were told we needed to become a Non Profit Company (NPC) in order to gain tax exemption. We were led to believe that being an NPC was like being a charity.

This was all completely wrong!

We should never have registered church as an NPO, rather we should have registered our community outreach programmes under a different name as an NPO, simply because SARS do not grant tax exemption to faith based organisations such as churches.  Also, being a VA or an NPC are both just routes to becoming an NPO. In fact it is illegal to be both, and as such The Gathering is breaking the law.  This also explains the delay with our S18 certificate, because SARS will be viewing our application as being fraudulent. Especially as they will not issue S18 to a church.

Phew!

So where do we go from here?

The man from DSD will now de-register The Gathering as an NPC and as an NPO, and as such we will have a clean slate to go again...

For several years now Linda has spoken prophetically over The Gathering Community Church calling us The Gathering International.  Today, The Gathering International is born.  Thank you LORD!

The man from DSD will now begin the process of registering The Gathering International as an NPO along the VA route.  Once done, he will then lead the charge with SARS and registering The Gathering International as an SA taxpayer so that we can get the longed for S18 certificate.  He estimates this should take about three months in total and his consultancy fee is substantially less than the so called experts were asking for.

See also: X Is The Unknown Quantity