Proposal: Revamp the KDE donation system to better support donors from the United States (US) and affiliated countries. In particular:
Support donations in United States Dollars (USD) in addition to the traditional Euro (EUR) options. This could be tied to an overhaul of the KDE donation site as its current incarnation is not user friendly and is glitchy.
Provide US income tax exemption information so that US-based donors can write off contributions to KDE on their yearly income tax return.
Why: Online donors from the US currently face foreign transaction fees and are currently unable to write off contributions to KDE. Eliminating these administrative roadblocks makes donating from the US easier and cheaper. It also makes US-based donors feel like first class sponsors.
Why Now: KDE recently announced their intention to solicit donations in Plasma Workspace. This proposal would help donation solicitation in the US and select other economies that prefer USD over EUR.
KDE e.V. is based in Germany. While I am not a lawyer, my understanding is that donations to foreign organizations are generally not tax deductible in the US.
Please be careful - that does not make it a contribution to a U.S. based organization, though. Please refer to page 6 of this IRS publication:
You can’t deduct contributions to organizations that aren’t qualified to receive tax-deductible contributions, including the following…
Foreign organizations other than certain Canadian, Israeli, or Mexican charitable organizations. (See Canadian charities, Mexican charities, and Israeli charities under Organizations That Qualify To Receive Deductible contributions, earlier.) Also, you can’t deduct a contribution you made to any qualifying organization if the contribution is earmarked to go to a foreign organization. However, certain contributions to a qualified organization for use in a program conducted by a foreign charity may be deductible as long as they aren’t earmarked to go to the foreign charity. For the contribution to be deductible, the qualified organization must approve the program as furthering its own exempt purposes and must keep control over the use of the contributed funds. The contribution is also deductible if the foreign charity is only an administrative arm of the qualified organization.
I am not a lawyer either, but my reading of that - in order for a contribution to KDE to be tax-deductible for U.S. taxpayers, it would need to be to an arm of KDE that exists as a charitable organization in the United States - not just a mailing address that exists to receive funds that then get sent on to the German org, but an actual registered and independently governed group.
This would then create the problem for KDE that the broader/overall org based in Germany, with its existing board and all of that, couldn’t direct how funds donated to the U.S. organization are spent - so there would need to be two separate budgets: the existing overall one, and the “U.S. funds to be handled by the U.S. subgroup” one.
Any officially qualified tax law expertise would be welcome, as I may be misreading that - but I believe U.S. taxpayers legally deducting KDE donations would require a more involved solution than changes to the donation system alone.
(And for what it’s worth…charitable contributions only have any impact on U.S. taxes if the taxpayer itemizes deductions rather than take the standard deduction, and it is rarely advantageous for individuals to itemize. This may be something to be discussed with whoever seeks corporate contributions as they would be the only ones likely big enough to be impacted)
I donated like 25$, I don’t care or intend to claim a tax refund deduction on 25 bucks.
But sure, if you’re some big time money bags person donating 10000$ I’d suggest you do the deduction and look into the details of how you do the donation correctly and legally.