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

[Denis Rouzaud]

I second that Andreas, thanks for you work!
What a shame for Zürich.



Le lun. 29 janv. 2018 à 16:31, Richard Duivenvoorde <rdmailings at duif.net> a
écrit :

>
> Hi Andreas,
>
> Ouch that hurts! So FIFA is less profitable then QGIS??
>
> Shame on those Swiss Tax-people!!!
>
> But do not blame yourself. You put a lot of effort in this.
>
> We do not do 'marketing' of sofware is it? We do promoting of Free
> Software, not so much marketing the financial terms?
>
> Let's investigate if other FOSS projects got exemption, maybe even in
> other kanton's? My experience with tax stuff is that sometimes you need
> the right person on the right place :-(
>
> 7.7% ??
> Well that is at least better then our dutch 21% :-)
>
> Not sure if moving to another country is worth all the administrative
> hassle...
>
> It would be easier for euro payments though too...
>
> Regards, and again, no regrets and thanks for all the work you did!
>
> Richard Duivenvoorde
>
>
>
> On 29-01-18 20:51, Andreas Neumann wrote:
> > 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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> > Qgis-psc at lists.osgeo.org
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> >
>
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