[Qgis-psc] More information on the tax situation

[Andreas Neumann]

Hi,

Ok - I found out a bit more about what the tax situation means:

Here the german version:

-------------

Grundsätzlich unterliegen Vereine der Steuerpflicht. Allerdings wird ein 
Jahresgewinn unter Fr. 10'000 und ein Vereinsvermögen unter Fr. 100'000 
nicht besteuert.
Mitgliederbeiträge an die Vereine werden nicht zum steuerbaren Gewinn 
gezählt.
Ab 1.01.2018 (Steuerperiode 2018) werden Jahresgewinne, sofern sie 
höchstens Fr. 20'000 betragen, nicht besteuert.

-----------------------

I try to summarize what it means:

the yearly profit (income minus expenses) below 20'000 CHF is not taxed 
(starting from January 2018). Funds below 100'000 CHF are not taxed 
either (relevant is the bank account situation on December 31). I think 
both thresholds can be easily undercut - if the developers who work on 
bug fixing or other infrastructure work for QGIS always send me the 
invoices in time (before end of the year). We don't plan to accummulate 
funds anyway. What we have as income from donations and sponsorships 
should be spent in the same year, if possible.

On the VAT situation:

Donations are not subject to VAT, but sponsorships are subject to VAT  - 
if we do advertising for sponsors (see the discussion around the listing 
of URLs to company webpages). Membership fees also wouldn't be subject 
to VAT - if the membership fees and categories are equal to all and 
declared in a transparent way.

This situation raises for me the question if we could either get rid of 
"sponsorships" and call them "donations" or introduce a "membership fee" 
instead of sponsorings with different categories based on an 
organizations size. Sponsors would become members. This would be more 
complicated, because members can usually also vote and influence the 
association. Not sure if we want that. It would complicate the already 
quite complex structure of our voting process.

Another negative effect of not being tax exempt are the higher Paypal 
transfer fees and the fact that some organizations may have a policy 
that they can only support organizations that are declared tax exempt.

Anyway - I am still in contact with an Open Source lobbying organization 
in Switzerland to see if they can help us in our situation. They also 
have lawyers - but so far the lawyers did not respond - only the 
president of the organization.

Will keep you updated. Something to discuss on the upcoming PSC meeting. 
Sorry to bore you with this stuff - but somehow we should find a 
solution here.

Andreas


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