On Tue, Sep 06, 2005 at 10:40:23PM +0100, Rich Walker wrote: > In the UK, VAT registration is *required* if you are "in business"[1] > and your 12-month *turnover* exceeds £60000. Probably this is not an > issue for this organisation at present.
VAT registration isn't the one you need to worry about. Debian-UK isn't going to be shifting that much money in a hurry. Corporation Tax is the one to worry about. The limit for that is only £10,000 per financial year. I just ran a few quick projections based on the reports in the [EMAIL PROTECTED] archives, and it's reasonably likely that it'll be over that limit next year, given the current rate of growth in sales. It might be over this year, that's hard to predict. Corporation Tax also applies to members associations, clubs and societies at the same rate as for registered companies. Basically any group of two or more people that handles money and isn't a charity is going to have to pay Corporation Tax; HMRC's definition of "company" is "anything that owes us money and isn't an individual citizen". Corporation Tax requires annual tax returns and notification that the company exists, and HMRC is going to come along and audit anything as weird as Debian-UK fairly quickly, so the accounts had better be in order, backdated six years. Failure to file the tax returns in a timely manner results in a fine of £100/£200 plus 10%/20% of the unpaid tax, depending on how untimely you are. Failure to have your accounts in order when they audit results in HMRC conducting an autopsy of the company. It may also require a tax return to be filed for years when the association is below the limit. I'm not sure about that. If it does, the same penalties apply. Ask a chartered accountant. And those penalties can probably be applied against any members, since it's not incorporated with limits on liability. Bugger. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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