On 6/19/06, Michael R. Irwin michael_irwin@verizon.net wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
IIRC, oregon is usually recognized for very liberal non-profit corporate laws.
I doubt they are all that much different to justify a relocation.
If they allow members to not make their address public I'd say that justifies a relocation.
A stand out local feature is there is no state sales tax. Which means by current U.S. Federal law governing transactions over the Internet.
That doesn't really apply to non-profits. The specific feature I was thinking about was the ability to have as few as one director. But as it turns out this was Nevada anyway. Nevada allows bearer certificates for its for-profit corporations.
Here we go. Nevada statutes 82.181(1): "A corporation shall keep a copy of the following records at its registered office:" (c) "If the corporation has members, a members' ledger or a duplicate members' ledger, revised annually, containing the names, alphabetically arranged, of all persons who are members of the corporation, showing their places of residence, if known and the class of membership held by each" So "places of residence" are only required "if known".
Yes, in order to be a member of the organization you have to give your name. That part seems reasonable to me. Even if you want to contribute to Wikipedia (for instance) pseudonymously you can still do that. There's no requirement that your real name be tied to your username. For the purposes of meeting the activity requirements you might want to tie at least one pseudonym to your real name without making this information public, though. Hopefully one day Wikipedia will make it possible to contribute without making even your pseudonym public.
I'm sure Nevada isn't the only jurisdiction which has this feature. Jimbo presumably chose Florida because it's where he lives, and for no other particular reason.
I could not find an official Oregon state site via google which is rather irritating and disappointing. How the hell can we be a nation of laws if the laws are secret, unknown, or published in an expensive proprietary format nobody wishes to invest in?
I found http://www.leg.state.or.us/ors/ by typing in "oregon statutes" and hitting "I'm feeling lucky".
Anthony