I did a “quick & dirty”-donation to the IPFire-Project (just transfered 100,- € via bank transfer) at the end of 2021.
Now, because I’m pretty happy with my new-bought Mini Appliance and this community and because Easter is coming up, I wanted to send some “Eggs” to the project again. =) I know, I know, some continuous donations would be more helpful but please, no debate on principles right now.
Unfortunately I cannot find the bank-account of the project on the donation-site anymore and I did not want to send some money to the account which I sent money to over a year ago because I don’t know if it’s still active and the right one.
Long story, short: Do I HAVE to “sign up” on the donation-page or is there still the possibility to make a “quick & dirty”-donation?
Thanks very much for the donation in the past and for wanting to provide a further donation.
I believe that there were some issues, because of German tax laws for donations for companies, that meant that the direct bank account transfer is not used but I could be wrong with that.
@ms is the best to provide an answer to your question.
Yes, monthly donations would be way more helpful for our future planning, but of course we understand that not everyone is able to do these. And in the end, any kind of donation is a donation. They all help the same amount, just that any monthly ones help us planning.
The best way to donate is our donation form at www.ipfire.org - Donate. On there, all payments methods that we have every supported are available - including bank transfer.
In the past we had our bank account details on the website and especially in Europe where SEPA payments are popular, cheap and easy, people could send us their donation that way. However, the downside is with that method being popular that we do not have a lot of detail from you. That detail is necessary to find out what kind of tax we are paying on your donation and in which country.
In 2021, the European Union has changed some tax legislation which is now commonly referred to as “One-Stop Shop” or OSS: Declare and pay in OSS
So if someone from an EU member country donates, we are liable to pay any taxes to that member state the person is donating from. But how would we know if we don’t have an address? A simple bank transfer does not carry any meta information apart from a name and an IBAN which contains a country code, but that is the bank’s country code and with more startup banks setting up in Europe having customers from the entire EU, that is not reliable information about where the donor is from. If we are in doubt, we will have to assume that the donor is from Germany which requires us to apply 19% VAT to the donation. Don’t ask me why this is the way, but I assume every country tries to grab as much tax money as possible - and so does Germany.
So what does this mean for us? Not much changes, apart from that we pay tax to different countries. And we of course want to figure this out as precisely as possible so that we are doing this right. So please make sure that you select the right country on the donation form when entering your address.
We have also automated the entire process so that there is no extra work for either you or us. You will automatically receive an email with a payment receipt once everything is processed.
Maybe we should have made this a little bit clearer in our announcement when we changed the payment process, but normally all these details about payments and taxes make people refrain from donating which is quite sad.
But please, don’t refrain from asking any questions regarding this process. Yes it is complicated, but it also is the only way for us to fund the project.
thank you very much for this elaborated answer. I did not know, that you have to pay taxes on a donation and that it is so complicated for you if you receive something as a gift. This is kind of sad and pathetic (for Germany). Seems like it would be easier to jump in the car, drive up to Datteln and invite you all for drinks or diner once a year.
Anyway, I’ll take this as a sign to make a commitment and think about a continous donation then (well not about the donation itself but the amount ). Keep up the good work!
Oh taxation is so complicated, especially when dealing with the entire world. Hence I spent months on writing something that does this automatically for us.
The problem here was that Jon was considered by the system to be in Germany, where he would have been liable to pay 19% VAT. Since he is from the US this does not apply. Happens
