Dear Laure, (01)
thanks a lot for clarifying these points - they are pretty much what I
expected. My main reason to consider registrations through IAOA was
the credit card payment option. But, as you point out, it is not very
attractive anyway. (02)
The non-profit non-taxed status is, as I found out myself in
considering alternatives for Vespucci, not an option for summer
schools. Vespucci has the complementary form of organization: a
commercial company (as I explained to some before). We run the summer
schools as non-profit, but the tax controllers do not mind if we earn
more than we spend (to spend it on a future summer school, for
example). It is us who want to avoid that, so that we pay not too much
in taxes, but there is no legal problem at all. (03)
Having said this, we do have costs, of course, that are not showing up
in the summer school budget that we discussed. We pay several thousand
Euro per year on accounting alone (a function of the number of
transactions, among others), plus income tax, plus the VAT difference. (04)
I propose that, overall, we run the registrations and payments for
2011 through our Vespucci web site, requesting bank transfers with
fees paid by the issuer. On a smaller scale, we can still optimize by
having some registrations of members and some payments go through
IAOA, if we want. (05)
Of course, I will make the complete transactions transparent to Laure
and anybody else who cares. Also, we would not need cash advances or
anything, as the big amount up front (the site) is paid by JRC and we
have some reserves for the rest. (06)
For the case that the summer school generates money that we do not
spend in 2011, we need to agree on sharing. My proposal would be to
deduct the incurred costs of our company for running the school and
then split the rest 50:50. Where that possible income for IAOA is
"banked" can then still be discussed so that your non-profit status is
not endangered. (07)
Does this help, Laure? (08)
best,
Werner (09)
On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 3:15 PM, Laure Vieu <vieu@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I realize now that this message should have been better posted through
> the mailing list.
> so, here it is
>
> Best,
> Laure
>
> -------- Message original --------
> Sujet : Summer school budget issues
> Date : Thu, 04 Nov 2010 13:16:14 +0100
> De : Laure Vieu <vieu@xxxxxxx>
> Pour : Obrst, Leo J. <lobrst@xxxxxxxxx>, Werner Kuhn <kuhn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Copie à : Nicola Guarino <guarino@xxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Dear Leo and Werner,
>
> I would like to understand better how you plan to handle the budget of
> the summer school.
>
> The main question is: would IAOA run the whole budget, i.e., handle all
> incomes and all payments, or is there another possibility that you are
> considering, namely that some other organization (university or other)
> handles that, possibly with a cash advance from IAOA, and with an
> agreement regarding how to handle possible losses and benefits and other
> connected issues?
>
> If IAOA will directly handle the summer school budget, then, please keep
> in mind these important constraints:
>
> - all the summer school attendees need to be IAOA members.
> if not, the whole summer school is classified as a commercial operation,
> and, not only we'll pay taxes on it, but (because the summer school
> budget will far exceed the rest) we will surely loose the non-profit
> label, something we absolutely need to avoid.
> I have recently learned that there are complications with selling a
> package membership+registration to those that are not yet members, as we
> did at FOIS 2010, because the Italian tax controllers consider that this
> is just a way to get around the law, and do look for such things.
> To avoid problems, we would need to open the summer school only to
> people who are already members, which means that registering to the
> summer school will be a two-step procedure for those who are not yet
> members. The new member approval procedure, which normally takes up to 1
> week, might be a great burden, and we'll try to figure out how to get
> around it.
>
> - any other income than registration fees or public bodies subventions
> are very likely to be labeled as commercial transaction, and so taxed
> (taxes are not very high, though). This is the case, for instance, of
> company sponsorships, which are considered as publicity space sales as
> soon as the sponsors have their logos appearing somewhere.
> The problems with this is two-fold.
> First of all, the overall commercial incomes cannot be higher than the
> regular (non-commercial) incomes of the IAOA, so, we cannot get more
> sponsoring than membership fees (from 2009-2010 experience, this could
> be evaluated at about 5000 euros) otherwise IAOA would become a
> commercial entity, loosing its non-profit statute (same as above).
> Second, having just one commercial operation forces us to change our
> fiscal regime for a minimum of 5 years, with a much more complex
> accounting, and the need to use the services of an official accountant
> (up to 1000 euros per year). So the benefits from such sponsoring need
> to be carefully evaluated, as they can turn out to be a loss rather than
> an income.
>
> - and obviously enough, this would cause a large increase of work for
> myself :-)
>
> All in all, if you have an alternative possibility to handle the budget,
> please do consider it seriously, and evaluate the difficulties and the
> costs associated to it.
>
> I add here again that the bank charges on credit card payments (only
> visa and mastercard) are of 1.2%. Paypal payments cost more than 3.4%.
> Bank transfers are free of charge provided the charges are paid by the
> issuer (standard procedure within EU).
>
> All the best,
> Laure
>
>
> _____________________________________________________________________
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> (010)
--
Werner Kuhn
Institute for Geoinformatics
University of Muenster
Weselerstr. 253
D-48151 Muenster
kuhn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://ifgi.uni-muenster.de/~kuhn
Vespucci Summer Institutes: http://www.vespucci.org (011)
_____________________________________________________________________
Msg Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/iaoa-education/
Committee File-share: http://iaoa.cim3.net/file/work/Committee/Education/
Committee Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?IaoaEducation
Activities Blog: http://iaoa-activities.blogspot.com/ ...(coming!)
To join: please email committee chair or to: info @ iaoa.org
IAOA website: http://iaoa.org (012)
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