The government has launched a consultation on raising the audit threshold for charity accounts from £500,000 to £1m a year.
The Cabinet Office consultation, relates to the rules for charities in England and Wales. It says that the proposed changes would result in an estimated 3,800 charities becoming exempt from the requirement for a full audit.
It estimates that the proposed changes would save £2,250 per exempted charity per year, or a total across all the charities of about £8.7m a year.
Under existing law, a charity must have its accounts scrutinised independently by an auditor on the Register of Statutory Auditors if it has an annual income of more than £500,000, or assets worth more than £3.36m combined with an income of more than £250,000.
The paper proposes that these thresholds be changed to cover charities that have annual incomes of more than £1m, or assets worth more than £3.26m with annual incomes of more than £500,000.
It is also proposing that the audit threshold for parent charities in group structures be increased from £500,000 to £1m a year to ensure there is no discrepancy between the threshold for the accounts of parent charities and subsidiaries.
The Cabinet Office said it planned to publish a summary of responses in early 2015, with any changes coming into force on 6 April 2015.
The deadline for responses to the consultation is 5pm on 27 January.
