[EU] Chapter creation as NGO

[Jeff McKenna]

Hi María, all,

I am in full support of an official non-profit organization, around the 
EU chapter of OSGeo.

Dirk and others know that I have been trying to help this along for 
years now, even in person in meetings with Dirk, and I do understand the 
importance of this official entity - it will open doors and give 
opportunities.

The QGIS project did create its own official entity, QGIS.ORG registered 
in Switzerland, but as a for-profit organization - I also supported that 
creation, initially discussing with Tim and others, and it seems to be 
doing great for their needs (similar to OSGeo, they just released their 
2016 financial report and are discussing their 2017 budget).

So I feel attached to this discussion, and am interested to help the 
EU/Europe chapter formation along.  I also volunteer to help, and to be 
listed as an initial member (before you laugh, consider that I have 
attended almost all FOSS4G-Europe events, and never attended a single 
FOSS4G-NorthAmerica event: that fact should show you the importance of 
Europe for the OSGeo community).

I have read this whole thread and am interested in seeing this through.

So keep up the great momentum! :)

-jeff

-- 
Jeff McKenna
President Emeritus, OSGeo Foundation
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Jeff_McKenna



On 2017-01-11 5:06 AM, María Arias de Reyna wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Context: We should have some kind of legal form on the EU Chapter so
> we can have access to subsidies, handle money and lobby.
>
> So I have been asking around. And Spain has become a bad place to do this.
>
> The process to create organizations is quite simple and straight
> forward, I just need two Spanish persons more and write some rules
> about how we will work. In Spanish (which can be easily translatable,
> I'm not worried about that).
>
> But now if we have money on our bank account, we will have to pay
> taxes yearly:
> https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impuesto_de_sociedades_(Espa%C3%B1a)
>
> It should not be a high tax (depends on what we do), but it is not pretty.
>
> Before, you could have small amounts in the bank without having to pay
> taxes, but they rewrote the law and removed that part. Donations,
> subventions and subscriptions are exempt, but if we organize for
> example a FOSS4G-EU and sell tickets, we will have to pay taxes for that.
> (And we should be very careful about subventions, donations and
> subscriptions, because depending on how we do it we may have to pay
> taxes too). We will also have to be very careful and detailed on how we
> spend the money to prove we are non-lucrative. If the Tax Agency
> suspects that we are paying higher diets for travelling than what they
> think is needed then we may get fines, for example.
>
> (Yes, they don't know where else they can tax or fine us...)
>
> So unless you have similar issues, I guess Spain is not pretty for
> creating the European Chapter. If you have similar taxes, then Spain
> makes it very easy to create and maintain, although we will have to
> pay someone to take care of all this bureaucratic details.
>
> Regards,
> María.