[Foundation-l] Report to the Board 2008 04 30 (April)

[Michael Bimmler]

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 6:01 PM, Sue Gardner <sgardner at 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

-- 
Michael Bimmler
mbimmler at gmail.com