Re: By the way, what is "Debian Association, Inc."?
> From: Fernando Alegre <fernando@mars.superlink.net>
> > So, the obvious question is "what is Debian Association, Inc.?"
>
> Ian Murdock formed the corporation. I think it is not a charitable nonprofit
> because he didn't know how to do this at the time. Also, Linux International
> is not currently a charatible nonprofit. I think we need an accountant or
> attorney who will work pro bono to help us with this. The present legal
> organization is not quite what we eventually want it to become. We need to
> have two separate entities - the project itself, and a charitable nonprofit
> foundation used to make tax-deductable donations to the project. I know of
> lots of organizations that do this (ARRL, the big U.S. ham radio club is one).
> I wouldn't want to file the papers on my own, though.
>
> Bruce
> --
> Bruce Perens <Bruce@Pixar.com> Pixar Animation Studios
> Toy Story: > US$177M domestic box office receipts and an Oscar so far.
I think most states let entities organize as non-profit corporations
(no stockholders, other constraints), while tax-exempt status is an
IRS thing, and much more stringent, painful, and _expensive_ to attain.
So a business in my state can incorporate non-profit for about $25 in
a few days, but to incorporate as non-profit + tax-exempt takes at least
$700 (that's just the ~ IRS filing fee, no lawyers$) and a minimum of
6 months for the IRS tax-exempt determination (1 year is more typical).
Unless you're a big-budget organization that wants to be tax-exempt (?),
the IRS hassles just aren't worth the pain. Our Linux users group formed
as non-profit but not tax exempt, since we didn't want to hit up the
group membership for the costs to go tax-exempt. Non-profit tax-liable
is our only real alternative. Our members know we're not in it for the
money, so we try to have a zero-cost, zero-income operation. _Any_
money in or out of the organization creates a tax accounting nightmare
that is just no fun for a volunteer organization.
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