also sprach Philipp Hug <debian@hug.cx> [2015-02-27 09:06 +0100]:
> Am I the only one who thinks that this discussion is going into
> the wrong direction? We ask for registration fees for admission to
> the conference and not for any additional benefits.
The problem — simplified — is:
Unless a fee is mandatory for (a certain class of) attendees, it is
not possible to write invoices for the attendance fee (as there is
no service rendered you couldn't otherwise get for free). And so
far, we've never had mandatory fees. We've "kinda expected" people
to pay, but that wasn't mandatory.
So we can only accept purely voluntary donations and issue receipts,
but this has created problems in the past for people claiming
expenses or writing this off in their tax declaration. Plus, we
cannot "kinda expect" our prof/corp attendees to make a voluntary
donation, because then it wouldn't be purely voluntary.
To work around this, it has been suggested to create a "value-add
package" that those who want to contribute to the conference but
need an invoice can purchase, but which does not include conference
attendance. So the voluntary decision by prof/corp attendees would
be not to pay an attendance fee, but to purchase this package, for
which we could write an invoice.
I am myself not a huge fan of such a package, as it creates
additional work and complications (it's a difference service and tax
class than sponsoring or attendance fees).
I'm now checking whether we can make the attendance fee mandatory
for all prof/corp attendees, but have vouchers available on request
to waive the fee. Not sure how we could communicate this, but there
is a certain charm to this opt-out approach for prof/corp attendees,
and maybe a list on the website to pay them credit, like we did for
DC8:
http://debconf8.debconf.org/corporate.xhtml.en
I'll let you guys know.
Hope this clarifies things a bit. Sorry for the complexity here. As
I said on the channel, this is very slippery stuff and the major
problem with taxes we have is that they can punish you years later
for doing it wrong, and Germany's tax law isn't exactly trivial
(though the issues here aren't really specific to Germany, I bet).
It's by far not my favourite job, but I'd rather be diligent about
it and appear as a nuisance to some at times, than to take risks.
I am also not an expert on this crap (and would be completely lost
without PwC's invaluable and patient help), so if someone else wants
to take over, please do.
--
.''`. martin f. krafft <madduck@debconf.org> @martinkrafft
: :' : DebConf orga team
`. `'`
`- DebConf15: Heidelberg, Germany: http://debconf15.debconf.org
DebConf16: Cape Town: https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf16
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