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How is it possible to make tax free "donations" for profit making applications? You seem to imply there is nothing nefarious about the setup. Except the non-pro
by hackernewds 2y ago
How is it possible to make tax free "donations" for profit making applications? You seem to imply there is nothing nefarious about the setup. Except the non-profit designation doesn't actually perform no social services, instead stand as a business structure to skirt taxation. Change my mind
- throwup238 2y ago> How is it possible to make tax free "donations" for profit making applications? The nonprofit invests the tax free donations into the for-profit. It gets to keep its equity just like any other investor and as long as that equity held by the non-profit, there's no taxable event. If the nonprofit sells its share - since it was closely involved in the creation and management of the for-profit as an active investment - it becomes a taxable event under the unrelated business income tax rules. Until that time, the only "profit making applications" like ChatGPT and the API are run by the for-profit, which - I repeat - pays its taxes. I genuinely don't understand why people think they've skirted taxation except out of sheer ignorance of how non-profits actually work. A 501(c)(3) is not some magic Monopoly "get-out-of-tax-free" card and the IRS isn't stupid, there's a ton of rules for tax exemption. They'd have a much easier time with tax avoidance if they were an actual for profit corporation with billions of dollars because GAAP rules are a lot more forgiving than non-profit regulations.