Some time ago, I talked about enabling mpl donations to raise money
for development. My goal is to promote donations with some reasonably
prominent info on the web page, and some emails as well, to raise
enough to fund a sprint. This is the blurb I wrote for the
donations page:
All donations to matplotlib will be used to fund matplotlib
development. Our primary goal
is to raise enough funds to finance a developer sprint to work on
new features, better
installers and better documentation.
To enable donations, all project admins must opt in. In addition to
me, those are Charlie, Darren, Eric, Jeff and Michael and the opt in
page is at
http://sourceforge.net/project/admin/donations.php?group_id=80706.
The donations are set up to go into my paypal account, but if one of
you wants to create a dedicated account to handle these, that is fine
by me.
If anyone has concerns or suggestions, let me know. We get a fair
amount of web traffic and maybe we can raise enough money to do
something useful. I have no experience with donations so I have no
idea whether this is feasible, but it seems like it is worth a shot.
JDH
John Hunter wrote:
To enable donations, all project admins must opt in. In addition to
me, those are Charlie, Darren, Eric, Jeff and Michael and the opt in
page is at
http://sourceforge.net/project/admin/donations.php?group_id=80706.
The donations are set up to go into my paypal account, but if one of
you wants to create a dedicated account to handle these, that is fine
by me.
I seem to be having some trouble with sourceforge; it is not clear whether my update is going through. If we don't get a confirming email I will try again later.
If anyone has concerns or suggestions, let me know. We get a fair
amount of web traffic and maybe we can raise enough money to do
something useful. I have no experience with donations so I have no
idea whether this is feasible, but it seems like it is worth a shot.
Just a question: how do you handle taxes? Won't you be stuck paying income tax on any donations? Not that I know of any way to get around it short of incorporating as a nonprofit.
Eric
That is a good question -- does a donation not count as a gift? I
think gifts under 10,000 are tax free.
JDH
···
On Dec 3, 2007 1:15 PM, Eric Firing <efiring@...229...> wrote:
Just a question: how do you handle taxes? Won't you be stuck paying
income tax on any donations? Not that I know of any way to get around
it short of incorporating as a nonprofit.
short of incorporating as a nonprofit.
That's sure a lot of work -- can the PSA host this sort of thing? It would be a whole lot easier to use an existing organization.
-CHB
···
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Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
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Well, noone is proposing setting up an organization, just using sf's
existing donation infrastructure.
I found this on the question of whether the donations are taxable income:
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2005/02/tax_treatment_o_1.html
and some more info here
http://www.lclark.edu/~bojack/taxf04xans2.htm
It's not an issue I am too concerned about, really. In the unlikely
but pleasant event the donations are substantial, I think the costs of
the sprint or other uses of the donations for development could be
deducted as "expenses for the production of income", eg as in this
hypothetical example from the 2nd link:
Joe also has a blog and would want to know whether he can deduct the
$160 he spends on the ISP payment and the ($40 per month multiplied by
12) $480 he spends on his Internet costs. He would also want to know
whether he has to report the donations of $150. The issue is whether
this is a hobby or a profit-oriented activity. IRC 183(c) defines an
activity not engaged in for profit as any activity other than one with
respect to which deductions are allowable under IRC 162 (the "ordinary
and necessary" business expenses) or under IRC 212 (expenses related
to the production of income. There is also a rebuttable presumption
in IRC 183(d) that an activity is engaged in for profit if, in three
or more of five consecutive years, the activity earns a profit. IRC
212 allows for a deduction of expenses for the production of income.
Since 20% of the time Joe spends on the Internet is related to his
blogging activity, he will be allowed to deduct 20% of the $480, which
is a deduction of $96. The $96 for his Internet service the $120 he
pays his ISP total to costs of $216. Since the $216 exceed the
donations of $150 (which will be includable in gross income since they
are online tips and thus includable in gross income, Reg. 1.61-2(a)(1)
and the point in Olk v. US that if it isn't given with detached and
disinterested generosity but is, instead, for some service, which is
what these donations are) then Joe will have a loss of $66.
···
On Dec 3, 2007 1:52 PM, Christopher Barker <Chris.Barker@...236...> wrote:
>>short of incorporating as a nonprofit.
That's sure a lot of work -- can the PSA host this sort of thing? It
would be a whole lot easier to use an existing organization.