If you declare the our exempt purpose to include the things involved in
the conference, and make sure those are tax-exempt purposes (education,
furthering the state of the art, etc), then it is unlikely to be a
problem. As was mentioned, this is what USENIX does.
A number of years ago, I was a member of a church who decided to rent
out their parking lot during the week to the bank next door. They had to
pay taxes on that money, but didn't lose their exempt status. It was
obvious that helping a bank further their business wasn't related their
purpose as a church.
Ask a tax accountant or lawyer if you're in doubt. Don't choose the
most expensive route. Making a corporation requires a lawyer and a
whole bunc of other things that would be more expensive than that legal
opinion. Doesn't LOPSA have a lawyer they use?
On 07/31/2014 09:24 PM, Matt Simmons wrote:
It's not just the action itself, it's the action as it relates to the
organization. Here's the relevant part from the IRS:
1.
For most organizations, an activity is an *unrelated
business* (and subject to *unrelated business income* tax) if it
meets three requirements: It is a trade or *business*, It is
regularly carried on, and. It is not substantially related to
furthering the exempt purpose of the organization.
I suspect that we could argue that it is, in fact, related to
furthering the exempt purpose of the organization, but there's a
significant chance that the IRS wouldn't see it this way, and I don't
see the need to risk it. But IANAL. We'll have one on retainer for
these kinds of questions as we go through the formation, if that ends
up happening.
--Matt
On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 9:40 PM, Doug Hughes <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 7/31/2014 9:13 PM, Matt Simmons wrote:
It was decided after LOPSA-East of this year that PICC should
shut down
for reasons personal to PICC management. Since LOPSA local
chapters
aren't incorporated (or at least, these aren't), it's
unrealistic to
expect individual members of the community to assume a
financial risk of
tens of thousands of dollars to organize a conference, so when
evaluating what could be done, the idea was raised to have
LOPSA itself
be responsible for its own conferences, entirely. Still, the
financial
risk is immense. LOPSA-East costs between $60,000 and $70,000
to put on,
and that's double what LOPSA has in the bank. Not to mention
that it's
very likely to be considered "unrelated business income", and
thus it
could put LOPSA's 501c3 status in jeopardy.
Very likely? I find that surprising. We have an existence proof of
the opposite by way of Usenix with its various conferences. Why do
you think this is very likely when Usenix has been running
conferences to fund other initiatives for many years? How, also,
could it be considered unrelated since it is part of the core
charter of LOPSA to provide education of one form or another?
I don't dispute the financial risk at all, fwiw.
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--
Alan Robertson <[email protected]> - @OSSAlanR
"Openness is the foundation and preservative of friendship... Let me claim from you
at all times your undisguised opinions." - William Wilberforce
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