Re: [Debconf-team] Voluntary conference contributions for pro/corp attendees

[Brian Gupta <brian.gupta@brandorr.com>]

On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 9:58 AM, martin f krafft <madduck@debconf.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> DebConf attendance is free of charge for everyone, but we have
> suggested (and are planning to suggest) to our professional and
> corporate attendees to contribute certain amounts towards covering
> the conference costs. These are always entirely voluntary
> contributions and nothing keeps a corporate attendee from not paying
> any contribution. See last paragraph if you disagree with this.
>
> It occurred to some of us that attendees might actually prefer to
> receive proper invoices, as these are more natural in the context of
> business tax declarations and expense reports. You'll still receive
> donation receipts for the contributions, but those may not be as
> suitable to your needs.
>
> Therefore, I am proposing to make two changes to the registration
> form, and have attached a patch proposal against registration.xhtml:
>
>   - to underline the voluntary nature of the contributions,
>     a free-form field should be added so that people can choose to
>     contribute any other amount instead of just 200/500. The 200 and
>     500 are then simply the amounts we suggest to people who
>     identify themselves as pro/corp.
>
>   - to make it easier for people operating out of a business
>     context, a checkbox should be added with text like "Instead of
>     a donation receipt, I need a proper invoice. I am aware that
>     this invoice will then include 19% VAT as per German law."¹)
>
> In the long run, we might want to consider making the conf
> registration mandatory for e.g. corporate representatives (who are
> probably the only ones that deal with expense reports and
> VAT-inclusive invoices), but it's too late for DC15.
>
> ¹) this is the worst-case scenario and it's not unlikely that we
> will find a way to provide a way to get tax exemption here.
>

Could we just say these fees are mandatory tickets, and treat the
people we don't charge as need-based special exceptions that we sell
discounted tickets to? When I say discounted, I mean discounted down
to zero.

Thanks,
Brian