Karoly Negyesi wrote:
Hi!
My opinion is that given the diversity of Drupal it's almost impossible to strive for an entity which can give tax-deductions. You'd need a non-profit entity in USA, Canada, UK, Germany and Belgium just to cover the main areas.
If Boris or anyone else is able to rise a foundation which can accept money in the name of Drupal without paying taxes I'd say that's good. If we set up tax-deduction entities per country then the money flow between our entities will become a problem.
If we had non-profit *tax-deductible*[1] entities in USA, Canada, UK, Germany and Belgium, they could all voluntarily be members of the "Drupal Federation" (a legal, international organization *without* tax-deductible status). They could also all voluntarily donate money to that Federation, and the Federation could be responsible for managing spending on global/international Drupal activities. The country-local non-profits could also do whatever they felt was appropriate within their own countries. Therefore I propose we create the "global" Drupal "federation" organization[2] without concern for it being tax deductible, as a place to be the fiduciary body for Drupal money handling to start. Then folks in each country can create non-profit, tax-deductible Drupal foundations there if they want. I think tax-deductible foundations in several countries are a good idea, too. -- Chris Johnson [1] In the USA, any business can be a non-profit if so organized and registered in whichever state it is registered. Getting tax-deductible status is a federal-level IRS thing, and is much more work. That is: non-profit != tax-deductible or tax-exempt, although most tax-deductible or tax-exempt organizations are non-profits. [2] This formally organized federation/organization should be created in one country, and then maybe eventually go through the process of legally creating registered subsidiaries/foreign branches/whatever works best in each country where there is lots of Drupal activity. This would require some research to see if it is helpful to do so or not. It might not be necessary. But if so, it is far less work than creating a tax-deductible organization, at least in the USA.