Charities Regulations 2025

Applicants seeking judicial or administrative directions or approvals under the Charities Act 1978 are the primary payers. The Regulations target two groups of applicants by reference to the Act:

• Persons or entities making an application under section 4(1) of the Act for directions to apply property cy près (Regulation 6). The prescribed fee schedule names these applicants as the parties required to pay the relevant fee when making such an application.

• Persons or entities making an application under section 7F(2)(c) of the Act for approval that Part IA of the Act applies,specifically approval for investment in common funds (Regulation 7). The prescribed fee schedule equally identifies these applicants as liable for the fee.

Who ultimately bears the economic cost depends on who brings the application. The Regulations do not allocate the fee between multiple applicants or state liability if an application is lodged on behalf of others. The instrument does not provide for fee remission, waiver, or exemptions; accordingly, unless the Act provides otherwise, the named applicant is prima facie the party required to pay the fee set out in the relevant regulation.

Organisations that previously relied on the Charities Regulations 2015 must take account that those Regulations are revoked as of the commencement date (Regulation 4), and any fee entitlements, procedures or exemptions that were contained in the 2015 Regulations are no longer in force from 17 November 2025. The endnotes record that the Regulations were made by the Governor in Council on 5 November 2025 and came into operation on 17 November 2025, and that the instrument will sunset on 5 November 2035 under the Subordinate Legislation Act 1994.

Regulatory administrators within the agency responsible for the Charities Act 1978 will see a narrow operational change: the existence of a clear fee schedule for these two application types. The Regulations do not, however, describe the administrative collection process, nor do they provide any enforcement mechanism for unpaid fees; administrative staff will need to rely on the Act and internal procedures for collection and refusal of processing where fees are unpaid.

Third parties who advise applicants,lawyers, accountants, trustees of charitable trusts, and executors,are affected in practice because accurate fee categorisation requires assessing the "total value of the corpus of the property". These advisors will need to determine that valuation for fee selection and to document it in support of the application.

The Regulations create a single positive duty: where an application falls within the two specified categories, the applicant must pay the prescribed fee identified by reference to the total value of the corpus of the property (Regulations 6 and 7). This is expressed as a statutory charge, "the relevant prescribed fee is", with three value bands and corresponding dollar amounts for each application type.

What the Regulations do not do is equally important:

• They do not specify who receives the fee, the timing of payment or any payment method. The duty to pay is expressed, but the procedural mechanics are absent from the text. The Act or agency practice will determine where and how to pay.

• They do not set out any power to waive, refund or reduce the fee. The absence of waiver or remission provisions in this instrument means that, within the Regulations, no statutory exemption is provided. Any waiver or concession would need to be authorised elsewhere, for example in the Act, administrative practice, or another instrument.

• They do not prescribe evidentiary requirements about how to calculate or prove the "total value of the corpus of the property". The Regulations rely on that phrase as the trigger for the fee band, but leave valuation methodology and dispute resolution to other sources.

• They do not include enforcement or penalty provisions tied to non-payment of the prescribed fee. No penalty amounts, non‑compliance consequences, or suspensive effects on the processing of the underlying application are set out in the Regulations.

Rights implicit in the instrument are limited. An applicant has the right to be charged only the prescribed fee applicable to the identified corpus value band; the Regulations bind administrators to only the three prescribed amounts when processing the two application types. Additionally, the revocation in Regulation 4 operates as a right for affected parties in the sense that previous regulatory fees and provisions under the Charities Regulations 2015 no longer apply from the commencement date.

Decision-making authority for making the Regulations is expressly attributed to the Governor in Council pursuant to section 7 of the Act (Regulation 2 and Endnotes). The Regulations do not delegate further discretion on fees; the amounts are fixed. The Endnotes also draw attention to interpretive rules from the Interpretation of Legislation Act 1984 about how headings, punctuation and examples are treated, but these are stylistic interpretive points and do not alter the core duty to pay the prescribed fees.

The Regulations themselves do not create penalties or specify enforcement mechanisms. None of the clauses in the instrument imposes criminal or civil penalties, nor do they state administrative consequences for failure to pay the prescribed fees. The text is limited to prescribing fees for two classes of application and to revoking the earlier statutory rule.

Because enforcement provisions are absent, enforcement and consequences for non-payment must, if needed, be found in the Charities Act 1978 or in the administering agency's procedural rules. Regulation 6 and 7 are prefaced by "For the purposes of section 4(1) of the Act" and "For the purposes of section 7F(2)(c) of the Act" respectively. That phrasing indicates the fees are prescribed to give effect to those sections of the Act, but the Regulations do not reproduce any enforcement language from the Act. Practically, this means:

• Administrators will need to rely on procedural powers in the Act or in agency practice to refuse to accept or process an application that is not accompanied by the prescribed fee, if that is their intended enforcement mechanism.

• Any sanction for non-payment that is not set out in the Regulations must be separately authorised. There is no statutory authority in these Regulations for imposing fines, suspending applications, or recording non-compliance.

• If a dispute arises over the correct fee band, there is no appeal mechanism in the Regulations themselves; any dispute resolution path must be found in the Act or other administrative instruments.

Because the instrument does not allocate fee revenue or say whether fees are credited to a consolidated fund or retained by an agency, users must refer to the Charities Act 1978 or public finance rules to determine the destination and accounting of collected fees. The Endnotes contain interpretive material but do not address penalties or fee accounting.

In short, enforcement of payment and the imposition of penalties are outside the content of these Regulations. The Regulations create the monetary amounts that are payable for the specified applications, and they leave the administrative mechanisms for enforcement and collection to the enabling Act or other instruments.

The Regulations are made under section 7 of the Charities Act 1978 (Regulation 2). They explicitly operate "for the purposes of" particular sections of that Act: section 4(1) (Regulation 6) and section 7F(2)(c) (Regulation 7). The Regulations do not restate or amend substantive provisions of the Charities Act; they supply monetary amounts that the Act refers to when an applicant is required to pay a prescribed fee.

Regulation 4 revokes the Charities Regulations 2015. From 17 November 2025, the older regulatory instrument is no longer in force. The Endnotes echo this, confirming the instrument was made by the Governor in Council on 5 November 2025 and came into operation on 17 November 2025. The Endnotes also state that the Regulations will sunset 10 years after the day of making, on 5 November 2035, pursuant to section 5 of the Subordinate Legislation Act 1994. Therefore the instrument interacts procedurally with the Subordinate Legislation Act 1994 by being subject to the statutory sunset regime.

The Endnotes contain interpretive statements drawn from the Interpretation of Legislation Act 1984 (ILA). Those statements make clear that when construing the statutory rule, headings, examples, punctuation and provision numbers are legally relevant for instruments made on or after 1 January 2001. The Endnotes also record that explanatory memoranda, tables of provisions and other materials printed after the Endnotes do not form part of the statutory rule. This interplay affects how the Regulations themselves are to be read and how ancillary material is treated when interpreting the instrument.

The Regulations are silent on interactions with other fee orders, general public finance law or other Acts that traditionally govern fee collection and appropriation. Because the Regulations do not specify the recipient, appropriation or accounting treatment of fees, agencies and applicants must turn to the Charities Act 1978 and public finance legislation or Treasury directions to determine how collected fees are to be treated.

Finally, the Regulations do not attempt to define terms drawn from the Act, such as "corpus of the property" or "Part IA". That silence means that the legal definitions and operation of those terms must be resolved against the definitions and provisions in the Charities Act 1978 and any related subordinate instruments. The Regulations function as a limited overlay, specifying dollar amounts for particular statutory hooks in the Act.

This is Version No. 001 of the Charities Regulations 2025 (S.R. No. 115/2025), and the instrument contains a Table of Amendments that records there are no amendments made to the Regulations by subsequent statutory rules, subordinate instruments or Acts (Endnotes, Table of Amendments). The Regulations were made by the Governor in Council on 5 November 2025 under section 7 of the Charities Act 1978 and came into operation on 17 November 2025 (Endnotes; Regulation 3). Regulation 4 revokes the Charities Regulations 2015; the Explanatory Details note that Reg. 4 refers to S.R. No. 131/2015.

The Endnotes further record that these Regulations will sunset 10 years after the day of making, on 5 November 2035, pursuant to section 5 of the Subordinate Legislation Act 1994. There is no other amendment history recorded in this instrument. The Table of Amendments explicitly states that there are no amendments made to the Charities Regulations 2025 by statutory rules, subordinate instruments and Acts.

Because the instrument revokes the 2015 Regulations, practitioners should not assume that procedural or fee arrangements in the 2015 instrument remain in force after 17 November 2025. Any change to the fee amounts, fee bands, or the addition of procedural material would require a new statutory rule or an amendment to this statutory rule, and such changes would be recorded in the Table of Amendments. At present, as at the version dated 17 November 2025, there are no recorded amendments post‑making.

The Regulations themselves contain no litigation history. The instrument does not list cases, judicial determinations, or any challenges to its provisions. The Endnotes and Table of Amendments record statutory and administrative details but do not refer to litigation. Because the Regulations are a recent instrument (made 5 November 2025 and commenced 17 November 2025), and because the Table of Amendments records no amendments, there are no recorded judicial proceedings or tribunal decisions cited in the text of the Regulations.

The Regulations do reference sections of the Charities Act 1978 (sections 4(1), 7F(2)(c) and the authorising section 7) as the statutory hooks for prescribing fees. Any litigation that bears upon the interpretation of terms used in the Regulations, such as "corpus of the property" or the scope of Part IA and common funds, would arise under the Charities Act and related judicial authorities. The Regulations do not reproduce or summarise such judicial authorities.

In practice, disputes relevant to these Regulations may concern (1) the correct categorisation of an application under the Act, (2) the method of valuing the corpus of the property for fee band determination, and (3) whether a fee has been properly paid and accepted. None of those dispute types are addressed in the Regulations themselves; the Regulations therefore leave open the possibility that litigation could arise, but they do not report any litigation to date.

Because the instrument is limited to prescribing fees and revoking the 2015 Regulations, a search for litigation directly challenging these Regulations or related fee levels is not recorded in the instrument. The Table of Amendments and Endnotes contain administrative data only.

Several practical issues arise from what the Regulations say and what they omit. These are concrete, source‑grounded points to watch when advising clients or preparing applications.

1. Fee calculation turns on "total value of the corpus of the property", but the Regulations do not define that phrase. The Regulations tell users which fee to pay, but not how to calculate the corpus, whether it should be gross or net, whether liabilities are to be netted off, or what date of valuation applies. The absence of valuation standards creates a potential source of disputes between applicants and administrators.

2. Identical fee schedule for two qualitatively different applications. Regulation 6 and Regulation 7 prescribe the same three fees for different statutory applications under the Act. The instrument does not explain why the same fee bands apply to both processes, nor whether administrative cost structures differ between the two application types. Practitioners should not infer that the administrative work or evidentiary demands are the same simply because the fee amounts match.

3. No procedural content about payment. The Regulations prescribe amounts but do not state the recipient, payment timing, acceptable forms of payment, or whether the application will be accepted if unpaid. Administrative practice or the Act will govern these matters; applicants must verify the process elsewhere.

4. No waiver, remission or concession mechanism. The Regulations do not provide for fee waivers, reductions or refunds. If an applicant believes a fee is inappropriate, the Regulations themselves do not provide a statutory basis to seek relief. Any such mechanism would need to be found in the Act or in administrative policy.

5. No indexing or periodic review mechanism. The dollar amounts are fixed in the text. The instrument does not provide for automatic indexation, scheduled review, or adjustment by regulation. Fees could therefore be static for the life of the instrument unless the Regulations are amended.

6. Revocation timing and transitional arrangements are not specified. Regulation 4 revokes the Charities Regulations 2015. The instrument does not include transitional provisions about applications lodged or fees paid under the old regulations prior to 17 November 2025. Practitioners must be careful about which instrument applied to applications straddling the commencement date.

7. Sunset date may affect long‑term planning. The Endnotes indicate a statutory sunset on 5 November 2035. Organisations planning multi‑year projects or relying on a stable fee regime should be aware that the Regulations automatically expire on that date unless remade.

8. No penalty clause in the Regulations. Because the instrument does not provide enforcement rules, administrators must resort to the Act or other instruments to manage non-payment. This may produce procedural uncertainty.

9. Reliance on the Act for substance. Many operative matters are left to the Charities Act 1978 (defined in Reg 5 as "the Act"). The Regulations are tightly circumscribed; their practical operation depends on cross‑referencing the Act.

10. Endnote interpretive rules affect reading. The Endnotes reproduce rules from the Interpretation of Legislation Act 1984 that affect how headings, punctuation and examples are treated. Those rules can be material in tight interpretive disputes about the meaning and scope of the Regulations.

Each of these points is directly traceable to the content of the Regulations and the Endnotes. They represent implementation frictions and interpretive gaps created by a regulation that prescribes fees but omits many procedural and definitional details that users typically expect.

Checklist and practical steps, grounded in the text of the Regulations and the Endnotes.

1. Confirm the application type. Determine whether the matter is an application under section 4(1) of the Charities Act 1978 for directions to apply property cy près (Regulation 6), or an application under section 7F(2)(c) for approval that Part IA applies for investment in common funds (Regulation 7). The prescribed fees apply only to those two specific statutory hooks.

2. Establish the relevant valuation date and method. The Regulations require that the fee be selected by reference to "the total value of the corpus of the property". The Regulations do not define how to value the corpus. In practice, record the date for valuation that will be used and why, obtain a valuation or accountant's assessment if appropriate, and retain documentation to support the chosen valuation in case the administering authority queries the fee band.

3. Select the correct fee band. Apply the three bands in Regulations 6 and 7:

   • If the corpus is less than $30,000, the fee is $320.
   • If the corpus is $30,000 or more but less than $130,000, the fee is $770.
   • If the corpus is $130,000 or more, the fee is $970. Ensure the selected band is recorded in the application materials.

4. Check the commencement date. The Regulations commenced on 17 November 2025 (Regulation 3). For applications lodged on or after that date, use the prescribed amounts in these Regulations. For applications lodged before that date, verify which instrument applied prior to commencement, because Regulation 4 revokes the 2015 Regulations.

5. Prepare payment evidence. Because the Regulations do not specify the mechanics of payment, include evidence of payment with the application, such as a receipt, remittance advice or bank transfer confirmation, to avoid processing delays. If the administering agency defines a specific payment mechanism, follow that procedure.

6. Retain documentation for audit or dispute. Keep the valuation documentation, proof of payment and copies of the application. The Regulations do not provide for waiver or refund; proof of correct fee calculation will be the principal means of resolving administrative challenges.

7. Monitor agency instructions and the Act. Because the Regulations prescribe the fee amounts but not procedural details, consult the administering agency's published guidance or the Charities Act 1978 for directions on filing, service, payment accounts, fee accounting and any discretion exercised by administrators.

8. Watch for transitional or grandfathering issues. If an application straddles the revocation date of the 2015 Regulations, confirm with the agency whether the old or new fee schedule applies. The Regulations themselves are silent on transitions.

9. Plan for the sunset date. Note the Endnotes indicate the Regulations will sunset on 5 November 2035 pursuant to the Subordinate Legislation Act 1994. For long term cases or trusts, consider the potential for regulatory change before that date.

10. Obtain professional advice where valuation or application classification is uncertain. Because the Regulations leave the valuation methodology and the definitions to the Act and to practice, seek tailored legal or accounting advice to minimise the risk of fee miscategorisation.

By following these steps, an applicant can align their administrative practice with the narrow statutory obligations created by Regulations 6 and 7 and reduce the risk of processing delays or disputes. The Regulations establish the monetary obligation; procedural compliance requires cross‑referencing the Act and agency practice for the mechanics of filing and payment.