On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 6:01 PM, Sue Gardner sgardner@wikimedia.org wrote:
We also continued explorations of the status of our ability -in conjunction with the chapters- to offer tax-deductibility outside the United States. We have developed a list of the top-10 countries that have donated to Wikimedia in the past, with the goal of developing tax-deductibility in priority countries where we do not currently offer it.
Hm, not sure whether I read this paragraph correctly. Do you a) want to support chapters to obtain tax-deductibility in the listed countries or b) try to get tax deductibility for *WMF itself* in these countries?
If b), I wonder whether this is possible at all, because, surely, if you want to be tax deductible in a country, you must have a 'seat'/'residence' in this country. For Switzerland, at least, I can tell you with pretty much confidence that unless the WMF sets up offices in Zurich and / or creates a branch here, it won't qualify for tax deductibility and I would be rather surprised if this was different in other European countries (I know even less of the other legal systems...)
But maybe I'm misunderstanding something.
Michael