David Megginson said: > So, in the end, my advice is not to do it. If you want to make a living or > partial living from FlightGear, set up a separate commercial site and be > prepared to learn about CRM, tax laws, incorporation laws, legal fees, > insurance, NDA's, contracts, and all the other fun that comes with running > your own small business.
Well...hmm. This is a little pessimistic in tone. Non-profit can be handled with reasonable ease, at least in the US. Find someone who will set it up for a reasonable fee (free if possible), get a cost for registering and solicit contributions to do so. It isn't that bad. However, before doing this, I would consider what is really required here. You see, at least on the federal level you can collect quite a large sum of money as "gifts" before you have to put anything on your tax return. Even if Curt, or someone handling the money, did have to file a Schedule C (which is generally a no brainer for something like this) all he'd have to do is make sure the money got spent to avoid liability. The main reason for registering as a non-profit is to offer your contributors a way to take deductions off of their taxes. The second reason comes into play if "employees" are hired. That would be down the road a bit, I would guess. So in a nutshell my advice is: (1) Think about the project image issue. (2) Don't be afraid of small business. People do it every day. It doesn't have to be complex or "commercial". Best, Jim P.S. Note, I am not a CPA or a lawyer, but I've been intimately involved in starting up corporations (one was my own) and have filed a few schedule C forms over the years. Talk to a CPA who understands that you want to "keep it simple". Generally speaking business lawyers don't know what "keep it simple" means (or rather they recognize that "simple" != "legal fees"). _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
