We’ve always been worried that developing Free and Open Source Software would not be recognized as a charitable cause by the German tax system, so we were glad when the tax office originally approved our non-profit status in 2021. But now we have received a notice from the same tax office that our non-profit status has been withdrawn. This came with no advance warning or explanation. Earlier this year we went through a successful tax audit, which in fact resulted in some favourable adjustments as we’ve been paying too much tax. Our tax advisor immediately submitted an appeal to the decision, but so far, we have no new information.
Germany doing its utmost best to drive away innovation. Genius.
But why go to the USA? The EU has 27 members and Switzerland is a neighbor…
I was wondering the same thing. Maybe in the USA it is easier due to our relaxed (almost non-existent) business oversight from the government? Not sure.
Also it’s a bigger market of lawyers, so probably easier and cheaper to get high quality legal help against bullshit like this.
I don’t know the answer but they pointed this out further in the press release:
However, it’s also important for us that Mastodon is one of the few, if not the only social media platform that operates out of the EU, and we would like to keep it that way.
I’d assume that this is for a reason, too. If it were advantageous to run your company out of the EU people would probably do so sometimes.
Pretty silly for something literally used by the European Union and other European Governments. Am I right in thinking the German Government is one of those?
Insanely bizarre, Germany has historically been pro-open source and the EU was just saying that the Fediverse is here to stay.
Could you provide a source for the second part? I’m genuinely interested
Germany has historically been pro-open source and the EU was just saying that the Fediverse is here to stay
That’s a matter of politics. The tax authority doesn’t care about the political stance of the German government. They also sometimes just take weird decisions that seem pretty random, but it’s nothing political.
I know they were already in the process of the 501c but that’s really gotta come as a bummer.
They’ll lose a lot of donors in the EU if they can’t keep that non-profit status.
I thought it was decentralized? Disappointing to learn this.
It is.
The people in charge of maintaining Mastodon in particular though need to establish some kind of legal entity and that needs legal recognition somewhere.
Why? Bitcoin does not and that is the point. If there is a throat to chock some will chock it or take it over.
