2009/3/19 Michael Bimmler mbimmler@gmail.com:
On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 2:53 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
If we win the bid, there are all kinds of legal stuff we'll have to sort out - if everything will be done through us (rather than WMF), which I think is likely, we will need to open a trading subsidiary.
Do we know how other Wikimania organising teams did this (....Delphine...?)
I can't remember having heard of any local trading company having been opened anywhere for this. Was it not usually the WMF that would have signed contracts if necessary? See also eg. http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Contact "Wikimania is a yearly international conference organised by the Wikimedia Foundation."
Yes, I think WMF has handled it all in the past, but I think it might be easier if we do it. The WMF won't get the same charitable benefits that we do. Opening a trading subsidiary may become necessary at some point even if we don't need it for Wikimania - for example, if we sell more than £5000 worth (that's income, not profit) of chapter merchandise in a year (that's a lot of merchandise, I know, I think big!) we would be taxed if it didn't go through a subsidiary. We also have plans for annual UK conferences (combined with our AGMs) - if those get big enough to involve significant business risk, they would need to go through a subsidiary as well.