also sprach Philipp Hug <deb...@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 <madd...@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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