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Comment by piskerpan | Hacker News Reader

Is a 10€ donation profit? Is a recurring 900€ donation profit? I already have to pay taxes on these donations.

Donors get “perks” for the donations, so the receiver is essentially selling these perks and services.

At what point am I responsible for every single module I’ve ever produced because I received X000€ in donations this year?

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Any kind of commercial gain can be considered "profit". 10ct/month from an ad banner is considered a commercial activity in Germany and courts treat it as such, with consequences like Impressumspflicht (need to publish personal data, tax number, phone and fax number of the person responsible for a website) and DSGVO applicability. Same for indirect "profit": there have been judgements that considered blogging a commercial activity if the topic of the blog is similar to the dayjob of the blogger because the blog is considered an advertisement to a future employer or customer.

Therefore I would consider any kind of open source contribution by an IT professional a commercial activity. Only if the open source contribution is strictly a hobby and your normal job involves nothing IT-like at all you'd maybe be safe.

Is having your name on a project “profiteering”? Is publishing a project to sustain the reputation of a conference speaker made as a sidekick, profiteering?

Yes. All money is profitting, doesn't matter if it's a donation or a sale.

That is not true - donations are not usually considered profit, at least in Germany. They occupy a bit a weird middle ground. They may count as income, but for example donations we receive for the open source projects that our company runs are VAT exempt. However, it must be true donations and not provide material benefit - if the donations provide any substantial benefit (priority when considering features or bug fixes, access to special features, …), then it‘s no longer donations but services. Things like a mention on a supporter page, occasional swag and stickers, … are usually fine.

As always, talks to your tax accountant about your specific case, this is not legal or tax advice, …

You seem to be conflating being eligible for vat with income that would qualify as “profiting”. Profiting just means you benefitted. And taxable income is nearly always profiting.

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