Can local businesses donate stock or equipment to charity shops?

Short answer: yes — surplus stock, ex-display items, returns, and office equipment you're replacing can all go to a charity shop rather than the skip, and if you're a limited company, it comes with genuine Corporation Tax relief, not just goodwill.

What businesses typically donate

• Surplus, ex-display or returned retail stock — unsold seasonal lines, samples, past-season products, or stock you simply overordered.
• Office equipment being replaced — furniture, computers, printers — follows the same rules as any other donation: PAT-testable for electricals, no obvious damage for furniture. See our electricals and furniture guides.
• A one-off office or unit clearance — moving premises, downsizing, or closing up.

Two different routes, depending on scale

• Small or one-off amounts: contact a local shop's branch manager directly, the same way you would as an individual donor. Check the directory for what a nearby shop currently has capacity for.
• Bulk or ongoing supply: most major charities run dedicated corporate stock-donation schemes, separate from the local shop — often with free collection above a certain volume. These are handled by the charity's corporate partnerships team, not the shop floor, so it's worth approaching the charity's head office or website directly rather than a branch.

The tax relief, properly sourced

Per HMRC's own guidance, a limited company pays less Corporation Tax when it donates equipment or trading stock to charity. For equipment (office furniture, computers, machinery), you can claim capital allowances on the cost, provided it was genuinely used by your business. For trading stock, its value doesn't need to be included in your sales income, giving you relief on the cost of what you've donated. The donation has to be genuine — not conditional on getting something of material value back — and it's worth checking the charity can actually accept the gift before you commit it in your accounts. See gov.uk's own page on this for the full detail and current record-keeping requirements.

Doing a bigger clear-out?

An office move or unit clearance often means sorting a genuine mix of donate/recycle/dispose decisions at once, on a deadline. That's exactly what hands-on sorting and collection help is for — the same service used for house clearances, just scaled to a workplace.