hi!
a bit over a year ago we founded an e.V. (registered association in
Germany), with the purpose of holding the ownership of the
"
unhosted.org" domain name (making sure nobody creates a commercial
business out of it without the consent of the others), and of being
able to receive donations directly via paypal and POBS (plain old
banking system). What we found out later was that a lot of donations
(notably nlnet, but also flattr and Wau Holland Stiftung for instance)
could actually go directly to us as persons, and we didn't need an
e.V. for that. So from the initial T-shirts campaign with which the
e.V. was started and sporadic subsequent donations, we routed roughly
the following sums of money through it:
Routed through the e.V.:
via paypal: 4042+740+690-305+16.36 = 5183.36
via berliner bank: 95+33 = 108
Not routed through the e.V.:
via flattr: 74.48+305 = 379.48
from nlnet: 30000+5000+500 = 35500
from crisp: 500 = 500
In theory the e.V. shouldn't have to pay any tax over this because we
have a non-profit goal, but in the end after various emails, letters
and the tax office hanging up the phone on us, we agreed to pay them
the random amount of 112,60 euros which they asked for (which is about
the same amount as what we paid to paypal and to Berliner Bank in
exchange for their services).
Since it was so hard to talk to the tax office, we decided that we
don't want to use the e.V. anymore as a legal person to route money
through, and will just ask donators to transfer their donations
directly to specific people. The e.V. will still be the official owner
of the "
unhosted.org" domain name though.
On Sunday (9 september, the official project birthday) at 8pm Unhošť
time (which is the same timezone as Germany, France, etcetera) we will
have a very quick general e.V. meeting on irc (the #unhosted channel
on freenode, accessible via
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#unhosted ) with the following
agenda:
- what the donations money was spent on
- the decision to close down the centralized donations pot and route
no more donations/money through the e.V.
please reply to this thread if you have any questions or remarks about
this, that way the actual meeting can be more efficient. hope this is
ok with everyone.
Ciao!
Michiel