On 21 May 2014 12:22, Russavia russavia.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
A couple of things popped into my head that I am unsure of, but hope someone might be able to answer.
- I understand that processing of UK donations in the US has significant
tax implications on the funds collected. I would imagine that the WMF couldn't claim anywhere near the same tax relief on this income in the USA?
Very significant; with some caveats, any donation from someone who a) is a basic rate taxpayer (earns more than ~£10k/year) and b) fills in a short form agreeing to it, gets increased by 25% by HMRC.
This is handled by the charity rather than the donor - ie, the donor still pays tax and then the charity recovers it, rather than the donor claiming a tax deduction as in the US model. (It's an open question which of these is more efficient...).
I don't believe an overseas charity would be eligible for this rebate, and so money paid to WMF directly by UK residents is not going to get this aid.
- If there are tax implications, wouldn't it make more sense for the WMF
to register its own charity in the UK, thereby it could essentially take WMUK out of the equation completely?
...which is why WMUK was created in the first place, including a lot of legal back-and-forth to demonstrate that it was actually possible under charity law! (It took quite a while to get to this stage, including a first chapter which basically fizzled, but charitable donations was right there on day one as an issue.)
The chapter qua chapter has done some pretty good things, but one of the big drivers from the very first discussions back in 2005 (or earlier?) was the efficiency of being able to fundraise and take advantage of gift aid; everything else followed on since then. Of course, Wikimedia as a whole had a lot less money in 2005 and we were all somewhat unclear on what a chapter could actually do ;-)
So it seems a little weird, to me, to create a second charity to do the job that the first one was created for...