openmw.org

Pledging $10 a month. This is one of the few things I'm looking forward to. Keep it up scrawl!

Maybe the thread title "patreon" confuses people. I guess most people are looking for the word donation or something similar.

Keep it up Scrawl! You can always PM me if you need to hand off some tasks, I'll see what I can do!

Pledge: $2 per month

Pledged $15 per month. Not sure why I need to pay VAT, since it's a donation rather than a service being bought.

I agree with nim by the way, it would be great if scrawl's Patreon could be mentioned in the next news update.

Ossa wrote:Pledged $15 per month. Not sure why I need to pay VAT, since it's a donation rather than a service being bought.

Well, since scrawl is not a registered charity he is basically just providing a service like any other. From a tax perspective, paying him to work on OpenMW is no different from hiring a web developer to build a website for you, or a plumber to work on your sink, etc. Thus, VAT is applicable.

That isn't even remotely true, at least in the US and in most of Europe. Gifts (donations) under a certain amount per year are tax free, this applies to person to person. We are not 'hiring' scrawl to work on OpenMW, we are donating (sending gifts) so that he can work on open-source projects... not exclusively OpenMW.

The rules are different for person to organization, which OpenMW is not a registered non-profit.

For example, in the US: "... gifts of up to the annual exclusion ($14,000 per recipient in 2015) incur no tax or filing requirement."

In Sweden for example, there is no gift tax.

psi29a wrote:We are not 'hiring' scrawl to work on OpenMW, we are donating (sending gifts) so that he can work on open-source projects... not exclusively OpenMW.

In Sweden for example, there is no gift tax.

In Swedish law, gifts must be outright (sv. benefik) to be considered as such in a legal sense. That means there must be no strings attached, i.e. no expectation of reciprocation of any kind. Scrawl's patreon clearly fails this criterion, and is therefore not tax free in Sweden.

I imagine similar laws apply in other European countries.

No one expects scrawl to do anything with the money, it is pizza money. He has to live somehow right?

He is not legally bound to do anything, there was no contract. If there is no contract, then it can't be a service or good. Did scrawl give anyone here a receipt?

According to Patreon themselves:
https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/ar ... n-Patreon-

Again, scrawl is not offering any services nor goods. You are free to donate but that does not constitute a binding contract.

There need not exist a contract for a gift to be considered onerous. The question is what the intention of the gifter is. Again using Swedish law, there must exist gåvoavsikt (roughly "intention to gift") on the part of the gifter for the gift to be considered outright. Again, the criterion for this is that no compensation be expected in return for the gift.

K0kt409P wrote:Again, the criterion for this is that no compensation be expected in return for the gift.

Isn't that what is happening here? No one here is personally nor directly benefited by scrawl in sending him gifts/donations. He works on what wants to work on when he wants to, with no expectations. It is plain old "good will".