[Foundation-l] Tax status in the Netherlands for the Foundation

[Gerard Meijssen]

James D. Forrester wrote:

>On Friday, March 25, 2005 08:42 AM, Gerard Meijssen
><gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>At this moment I am researching setting up a Dutch chapter.
>>    
>>
>
>[Snip]
>
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>
>>Please give me feedback, is this something that we want. Is this
>>something also possible in other European countries ??
>>    
>>
>
>Yes, I think that having chapters in countries in the EU is worthwhile for
>two reasons - firstly, it helps with donations by providing a tax-relieved
>method of donating (at least, in some countries), and secondly, it helps
>foster a sense of community and belonging in the members.
>
>Currently just France and Germany have chapters set up, but we are looking
>at setting one up for the UK soon-ish. Eventually we may want to form a
>Wikimedia Europe organisation to liase and so on at a larger level, but for
>now this will suffice.
>
>One this that you may want to look out for is what exactly you can do whilst
>retaining the special tax status - for example, a UK chapter will not be
>able to merely blindly collect money for the main Foundation, but instead
>have charitable aims in and of itself (which might in practice not make a
>great deal of difference, of course - collecting money for international
>Internet-based education and learning projects vs. collecting money for the
>Wikimedia Foundation).
>
>Of course, you will need to have a quite large group of people willing and
>able to put in the amount of work required to run the chapter, which I
>imagine is not entirely simple (especially if none of you have done this
>sort of thing before), and are able to stick with the chapter through the
>longer term.
>
>Very best of luck.
>
>Yours,
>  
>
Hoi,
You miss the point of the my mail.

The point is that it IS possible to have the Foundation be registered in 
the Netherlands and in France as well (in principle as I understood 
from  Soufron). This allows us to do collect money directly by the 
Foundation. It means that the monies collected can be used by the board 
as it sees fit. It means that we do not need a chapter to REPRESENT the 
Foundation..

With this potential being true for the Netherlands and other European 
countries, we can have local banking accounts, have tax exemption in so 
far as is possible under the tax laws of a country. Chapters exist as a 
backbone for activities in a country. Consequently we need less people 
to administrate all these efforts but we need a high quality 
administration to do this.

*Do we want to go this way.
*Do we accept and understand the need for high quality administration.
*What are the problems for the Foundation to go into contracts in the 
Netherlands and other countries.
*Divorcing the chapters from the representation of the Foundation in 
countries.

Those are the things that are at issue. Whatever we choose it will have 
a major impact on our future organisation.

PS The need for a high quality administration is imho a given. At this 
moment many issues cannot be dealt with without the personal involvment 
of Jimbo. Jimbo does not scale he is a demi-God not a God. I am of the 
opinion that there is a need for a secretary to the board and some staff 
that do admin and answer all things that have an answer according to the 
policies of the board.

Thanks,
    Gerard