A point I brought up on Discord,
So as a pipe cleaning exercise, I’m thinking of going through the cash-out process for my current payout. Though since it’s pipe cleaning. I’m wondering what the right way would be to approach this from a tax perspective.
I had a similar talk about crypto currencies with my accountant. What type of taxes applied and whether it would somehow involve my freelance status. Their argument was, though you’re a developer, you’re not in the crypto business so you can treat it as you would any private asset. Here though, it’s not an asset but more like a service. And I’m definitely expected to know what I’m doing as I’m in that business as a freelancer.
For small amounts I don’t think it matters, everyone does a bit of “private work” off the books for friends and family, doesn’t matter if it’s related to their profession. But if it reaches the scale where that generates payouts approaching paycheck levels, I think it would be an issue.
Would the open collective foundation already distinguish it for us as not being a professional service, but compensation for doing something for the foundation?
Same there though. At what point would that trigger similar problems though where the tax service would argue: look these people are basically employees so you’re avoiding taxes by not treating them as such. I’d wager the big names on open collective, like webpack, have thought this through already. And open collective themselves may know. Would be good to figure that out as well. Would be a nice to have problem in the mid term
Linked by @decentralion
https://docs.opencollective.com/help/expenses-and-getting-paid/expenses/tax-information