Re: European bank account for donations

[Chema Casanova <jmcasanova igalia com>]

El lun, 12-03-2012 a las 17:02 +0100, Rodrigo Moya escribió:
> On Fri, 2012-03-09 at 14:36 -0600, Brian Cameron wrote:
> > Are any of GNOME's 3 sister organizations that have bank accounts in
> > Europe a tax free charity currently?  If not, then are we in a position
> > to meet requirements and set one up?

> GNOME Hispano is, and AFAIR has been used to get money for some of the
> GUADEC's organized in Spain. Chema Casanova should have more details of
> all this

What we have done in the past was quite simple. As events organizers we
just invoiced to sponsors and we paid the invoices from providers that
were issued in the name of GNOME Hispano. 

So in legal terms, we were responsible with providers and clients. As
everything was fine there was no real problem. The only issue could
arise when you transfer money between the two organizations, but in this
case it could be justified as a sponsoring invoice or a donation
depending of the motivation of the transfer. It isn't different to any
transaction from Europe to US between two different companies.

At this moment, GNOME Hispano is a non profit organization, the only
different with a company is that profits should be invested in the
association objectives and that we could receive donations. In our case
donations don't imply taxable deduction, because we haven't been
declared as public interest in Spain. In a common year our budget isn't
more than 2500€, and half of it is spend in bank commissions and the
taxes consultancy.

In any case a frame agreement of collaboration should define the
controls and procedures that could define how a entity should deal with
the funds.

There are possibilities, but implications should be studied, this year
GNOME Hispano will deal with the budget topic in GUADEC invoicing and
paying invoices with our Bank Account. 

The other option is opening a delegation of the GNOME Foundation in
Europe, but at the end is almost the same as creating a new association
with a relation with the GNOME Foundation. Maybe this option could be
evaluated.

Regards,

Chema Casanova