[ale] [Fwd: Advertising on ale.org]

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Wed, 2015-08-05 at 23:04 -0400, DJ-Pfulio wrote:
> There are tax implications for you if there is any exchange of money,
> but I'm not certain how a $10 in cash exchange or pre-paid VISA would
> be
> seen.
If there is *income*, yes.  Remember that tax implications exist only
when the AGI less allowable deductions is greater than zero.  Also
recall that the IRS requires only that clear records of inflow and
outflow are kept, in order to properly compute taxable income.
IF the group accepts any amount of money, I would say that the books
should be kept as if it were a disjoint entity, even though it is not. 
 It is enough to prove that the net result is no taxable income.  In
fact, the IRS regularly disbands entities which classify themselves as
businesses but only ever operate at zero or loss; it reclassifies those
as "hobbies".
ALE could easily be considered a "hobby".
Anyway, creating any form of entity is a lot of work and effort, and
functionally only worth it once there is a tax impact.  If 100% (or
more) of income is spent on expenses—whether that is to offset Melton's
after the meetings, or to pay for expenses such as the domain name or
things like the meetup expense, it is (AIUI, IANAL) really not worth
setting up a disjoint entity for.  If that number ever drops to less,
then the options are to either stop taking money or form something like
an LLC.
The LLC would require a different from conventional structure to serve
the needs of the group well, but that can be taken care of in the
operating agreement or articles of organization.  For example:
 * LLC members would need to be odd and low in number, but greater than 1.
 * LLC members would not be vested by influx of asset, but rather by group election and assigned equal "membership".
 * Operating Agreement would define all financial rules and bind the members to them.
 * If the members cannot reach an appropriate consensus on any issue, it should get forwarded to the group for a vote, votes should be held on the mailing list, and votes should only be cast by members of the mailing list.
 * Only members of the mailing list can be elected.
In that case, of course, virtually all of this discussion becomes moot
because it'd be defined by infrastructure.
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