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Comment by z3t4 | Hacker News Reader

I don't know if this is legit or not, but a Swedish non profit is pretty awesome, it means that anyone can be a member as long as they pay a yearly symbolic member fee. Everything is owned by the members and is fully democratic, where each member has equal voting power, where members usually select a board, and the board makes the daily decisions. When it comes to taxes, etc, non-profits pretty much don't pay any taxes, yet can make millions in profit - as long as you spend that money in ways that benefits the members.

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To be precise, not everyone can join (indeed it is the non-profit bylaws that establishes this) but to be tax exempt it has to be what is called "open". I.e any person that fulfills the membership criteria can join (and it is the non-profit that decides on there should be a fee or not).

To be a non-profit you also have to spend at least 80% of the income on the stated purpose of the non-profit (which of course might benefit members in the way that the goals of the non-profit is worked on but not in the way of paying money to member).

The way you put this it sounds as if it would be easy to take over a non-profit.

Just send people in with token amounts of money and vote on things that benefit your company.

This is in fact possible and done sometimes, if the membership rules allow people to join like that.

The non-profit can still have rules in place on who is accepted as members and who isn't, as long as the rules don't break any laws (discrimination etc.). They also can have a mission statement and rules that are not up for vote. They can have members enter a contract with the non-profit when joining as a member.

Also, depending on who's "taking over" and who's "taken over", it can be argued that if the majority of members that provide the majority of the funding to the non-profit, shaping the non-profit according to the majority of its members is the right thing to do. If there's too much differences in opinion, the non-profit can also split any time.

Indeed this can (and does happen) but the non-profit can loose its status if it starts doing stuff that does not further its purpose as stated by the bylaws. And the tax authorities can decide that your stated purpose would not be tax exempt (for example a union would not be tax exempt and neither would a collector society [think for example a numismatic society])

Is this something anyone can do, or do you need someone to be a Swedish citizen first?

I don't know but the according to the forms for registration you seem to need a Swedish identification number for the CEO of the non-profit. The same is true when you want to change the members of the governing council. These are hard to get a hold of if you do not live here. You also need to be based in some part of Sweden, and there is a fee associated with moving HQ to a different region in Sweden. These organizations can be insanely complicated in their nature and are allowed to own and operate very large companies (some of the largest in Sweden are owned this way).

Changing governing council: https://bolagsverket.se/polopoly_fs/1.279!/Menu/general/colu...

registring a new non-profit. https://www.skatteverket.se/foretag/etjansterochblanketter/b...

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