Actually, if you collect money, you need to keep accounts. If you are making profits from the event, you need to pay income tax. In addition there may be some other subsidiary or local laws that come into play, I cant think of any that apply.
So long the amounts are small, and the events low key (eg dont put in newsapper advts), I dont think Income Tax dept will bother (or even know) unless someone brings it to their notice through a complaint or tip-off. If that happens, then the person who has collected the money will need to prove that they have not made money from it.
If the organisation is a non-profit organisation, they are exempt from tax so long as the surplus money is not taken out of the organisation, used for any personal purpose of any member or officebearer of the organisation or used for the benefit of the members. However, in order to avail of the benefit, you need to be registered as a coop society, social organsation or non-profit company. EAch of these cost time and money and invovle a lot of paper-work. Besides, after the registration, you have to keep doing annyal paperwork like filing returns, ITax statement, getting accounts audited, etc. Also you need to have a proper constitution, by-laws and follow them deligently (eg holding AGM, electing managing committee, etc.)
For a small setup all these dont make sense. One way out is, go ahead and collect the money and spend it immediately on expenses of the seminar or event (but keep detailed notes for future use). If the amount is small, no one is going to bother you.
Another way is if one of the colleges or some other organisation takes the event under their wings. (I am not sure how it will work, but it is possible). Eg. College X may allow LUG to hold the event in their hall or class room, collect the money and spend it on what ever is required. Ofcourse, LUG will need to ensure that the college does not go in loss on the event. Or perhaps one of the colleges can actually sponser the LUG.....ie, they can form the LUG as a part of their college facilities like they have student society, book club, etc.
BTW, the cost of registering the LUG as a society is Rs. 10K to Rs. 15K as one time cost, at least Rs. 5K each year in paper work.
Regards Saswata
Frederick Noronha (FN) wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- ________________________________________________________________________
Message: 1 Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2004 05:23:19 -0800 (PST) From: Sagar Behere sagar_behere@yahoo.com Subject: money matters
Hi all,
I am talking on behalf of NashLUG, the Nashik Linux Users Group
We are a fledgling linux users group and to spread the Linux word around, we often go to nearby colleges and hold seminars on various aspects of GNU and linux.
In doing these seminars, we incur some costs and so far the group members have been bearing this personally.
We have this idea of charging the seminar members some nominal entry fee, somewhere in the range of 20 to 50 rupees. In these seminars, we'd also be distributing copies of knoppix or similar stuff.
Which brings us to the point in question. During one of our discussions, a question came up as to whether we, a bunch of enthusiasts, were authorised to collect money. We do NOT want to run into problems later on with, say, the income tax authorities or their kin.
What is normally done under such circumstances? Do we have to register our group with some authority in order to collect money? What do other LUG's do? I am sure there are precedents to this problem.
Please advise.
Thanks in advance, Sagar (for NashLUG)
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