GitHub Sponsors

[Perry E. Metzger]

On 11/10/21 15:17, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> To expand on that: Some years we receive income from Google Summer of 
> Code. When we do, that money goes to one of the MacPorts elder 
> council. He holds the money in his personal bank account and 
> distributes it as needed for MacPorts-related purposes, and he pays 
> tax on that income on his personal income taxes. I feel that this 
> situation would be compounded by starting to accept donations. 

So again, several obvious options:

1. Get a TIN for "MacPorts" as an unincorporated association, open a 
bank account for it, have it file annual taxes (which should be near zero.)

2. Get the Software Freedom Conservancy to handle things for us. They do 
that for a vast number of projects (including brew! and git!) and 
they're likely to do a fine job.

3. Incorporate. I've done this for past software projects I've been 
involved in. I don't recommend it, but it's not so horrible. I'd 
strongly recommend (2) over this though.

I'll note again that unincorporated associations are totally a thing. 
Indeed, for legal reasons, many political campaigns in the US are 
unincorporated associations ("The Committee to Elect Jane Doe" is a 
typical pattern) and they file their own paperwork and are just fine. 
Most law and accounting firms until recently were unincorporated (though 
now they're often PCs or LLPs). But doing (2) has significant advantages 
including that donations are then likely tax deductible.

And no, none of this has to change the very informal way the MacPorts 
elders run things.

Perry