Nathan Russell wrote:
--On Thursday, February 26, 2004 9:00 PM +0000 Caroline Ford caroline@secretlondon.me.uk wrote:
We need to check how this affects our not-for-profit status. I guess that the plan would be for the wikimedia foundation to get some sort of profit share? In the UK this could count as primary purpose trading under UK Charity Law (depending on what the objects of the charity were) - and would be legal. In some cases a trading company would have to be set up.
I know _nothing_ about US not-for-profit law - I just thought I'd flag it as a potential issue.
Caroline
It's an issue to some extent - but non-profit groups - college honor societies, churches, etc do fund raising activities all the time. I believe the issue is in what the money can be used for - and it can be and is used for employee salaries, specifically.
Any gross revenue that is subject to tax may be reduced by all relevant expenses. As long as we continue to need donations it suggests that the expenses exceed revenue, in which case taxes are a non-issue. Having employees, however, could intrduce us to the wonderful bureaucratic world of tax wihholding and other employment standards.
Ec