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

[Tim Sutton]

Hi Andreas

Beyond agreeing with Richard's comments, I would add:



On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 9:51 PM, Andreas Neumann <a.neumann at carto.net>
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.
>

​Doesnt your tax law work that you pay tax only on profit? If we can show
that all the funds are used during the year does it mean we would not pay
any tax?​



>
> 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 ?
>

​I would propose to roll it into the total (so we keep 461.5) - we should
also make it clear to people donating and sponsoring that a portion of
their contribution will be lost to tax.​



>
> 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.


​How can we accept an apology that never needed to be made in the first
place? I can only thank you for all the effort you have put into this!​



> 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.



​Yeah it is a bit of a blow - lets regroup and think what we can do next.
Maybe you have a friendly tax guru there who knows how to appeal the
process? Otherwise lets work on the assumption for now that we will have to
pay taxes - your VAT rate is at least surprisingly low....:-P

Regards

Tim​



>
>
> Andreas
>
>
>
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>



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Tim Sutton
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