[rescue] Computerfests (was: first real server hardware)

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Sun, 18 Apr 2004, Dave McGuire wrote:

> > That seems like a pretty loud symptom of a b0rked tax system.
>
>    How does incompetence and mismanagement within a charitable
> organization have anything to do with the tax system?

Because it's not always mismanagement.

Our tax system believes that fiscal years are each wholly separate and
unique entities with no relationship to each other.  If $nonprofit gets
a huge influx of cash on Dec 31., they can't POSSIBLY use it in January,
because that's a separate year!  Noooo, that was "profit" in the
previous year, so they must be retaining wealth and thus not really be a
non-profit!  Never mind that, had that cash come in around, say, June
14, it'd have been spent helping out whomever the target community is.

I saw a lot of this in my church.  There are two Sundays that most
everyone in the congregation shows up:  Easter and Christmas.  Offering
funds on Christmas tend to be huge--with a week left before that money
will be considered "profit" by the IRS.  Spending for it has to be
figured in advance.  And, while you can float with paychecks and accrued
debt (esp. when you're a church--calling a debt owed by a church in a
small town is business suicide), you can't float with handing $5 to
someone on the sidewalk, and you HAVE to ensure that the balance sheet
shows that they're a non-profit organization.

My church had to, at one time, retain a CPA just to keep their non-
profit status because they had to analyze the trends of money coming in,
so that they knew how to give that money away.  -That- is a waste,
because, without that stupid "fiscal year" concept. the money spent on
the CPA could be spend on charity, like all the other money was.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke  ) "Being on the Internet is not the same as being
Elgin, TX         (   famous.  That's like calling Cheetos 'dinner'."
USA                )                                    --Metal Steve