[Qgis-psc] Bad news: negative reply from Zurich tax office

[Andreas Neumann]

Dear PSC members and community,

Unfortunately I got a negative reply for my application of tax exemption 
from the Zurich tax office. For those who can read German I attach the 
letter.

They claim that our statutes imply that we follow an economic intent, by 
dealing with software development, bug fixing and marketing of free 
software. They also state, that in general they don't do tax exemptions 
for Open Source associations. Clearly, they don't understand how Open 
Source works.

This comes at a real surprise to me, because when I had a look at the 
list of tax-exempted organizations in Zurich, that seem to follow quite 
clearly an economic intent, whereas I have the impression that there is 
a lot of voluntary work going into QGIS with the intent to make GIS 
software available to the ones who otherwise could not afford to use GIS 
software. Because the german QGIS user group got tax exemption in 
Germany, I had the impression that a similar thing in Switzerland is 
only a formality - apparently not.

What are the next steps? First I will ask other Open Source 
organizations in Switzerland about this topic and if they think, 
something could be done about it. Otherwise, I will suggest, that we 
move our organization to a country that better values all the voluntary 
efforts that go in to Open and free software. Any suggestions of other 
countries who may host QGIS.ORG international?

For the budget, it will mean that I can't commit to additional QGIS 3 
bug fixing currently - I will set aside a couple thousand Euros for tax 
payments.

I also don't know how to deal with VAT in upcoming sponsorship invoices 
- should I add the 7.7% VAT on top of the sponsorship amounts, or should 
we declare that the sponsorship already includes VAT, meaning that from 
a € 500.- sponsorship we can only keep € 461.5 ?

Any opinions and suggestions?

Anyway - I deeply apologize for my failing to deal with the matter - and 
I apologize for the misbehaviour of my country's tax office. Apparently, 
people and organizations are not "equal" in my country. While very 
powerful organizations like the world soccer organization (FIFA), the 
olympics and the world economic forum are tax exempt - organizations 
that have turnovers in the billions - small organizations with lots of 
voluntary people like QGIS cannot be tax exempt. I am personally very 
disappointed.

Andreas


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