Gentoo Linux becomes an SPI Associated Project

This took way too long to emerge as a joke in my head. Well done! 😄

COTD. Take your +1 / star / upvote!

You are right, there is no EU wide status for this, but being recognized as charitable/public utility in one country might help you get a tax deduction in your own one if such a thing exists in its tax laws.

And yes, becoming an e.V. ("eingetragener Verein", meaning registered association) in Germany means that the public utility of your association had to be checked by the authorities and this can be revoked again if you start to act commercially (which leads too some strange constructs where an e.V. owns a commercial company...).

> Tax deductable in Europe? I doubt such thing even exists

Not for lack of trying by the Commission though. From their point of view allowing some people in the EU to claim donations to the same organisation as tax deductible while others not is inappropriate discrimination forbidden by treaty. This was a decade long dispute between the Dutch government and the EU Commission.

The current situation is a sort of stalemate: Dutch tax payers can claim tax deductions for donations to organisations with ANBI status, and that status has been opened to organisations elsewhere in the EU. So, if your organisation wants to attract more donations from the Netherlands, you can apply for an ANBI status. A few open-source organisations have done this, FSF Europe e.V. for example.

So I guess the current situation is that organisations wanting to allow tax deducatble donations in the whole of Europe have to get themselves registered as a charity in every country. Which is messy. I beleive some organisations have reciprocal agreements to help here but it's quite non-transparent. It would be great if some kind of "EU charity status" could be created, but given the lack of movement on this in the last few decades, I'm not keeping my hopes up.

Not quite tax-deductible, but in Hungary it's possible to "pledge" 1% of personal tax to certain non-profit(?) foundations. I think it takes a couple of years to earn this status, then on the tax form it's possible to specify the tax number of said organisation to receive 1% of the tax. Usually every year there's a campaign by charities (foundations working on cancer treatment, child care, dog shelters, etc.) to raise awareness of this issue and to get as much 1% as possible. Churches can get an other 1% - so registering the Church of Linux is an other option :-)