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

[Alessandro Pasotti]

Hi Andreas,

sorry to hear the bad news, btw don't even try to blame yourself: you've
done an amazing job to put all this paperwork together, thanks for all your
endless efforts!

Unfortunately I cannot recommend Italy for hosting the foundation: we are
(in)famous for our complicated bureaucracy.




On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 8:51 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.
>
> 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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-- 
Alessandro Pasotti
w3:   www.itopen.it
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