On Jan 12 23:15, Moritz Bartl ([log in to unmask]) wrote:

> What is being discussed here is _not_ merely "opening a bank account".
> What you are discussing is to set up organizations.

Yes. That is the whole point, specifically to avoid this:

> If you run an account under your name, or a shared account with
> someone else, you have the full legal responsibility.

Yes. And that is our situation now.

> But, maybe more importantly, what you receive to this account is
> (shared) income. If you don't declare it with your taxes, you are
> committing tax fraud.

This is not correct in general. Rules vary from country to country, of
course, and what you say may be true in some, but certainly not all -
the following applies in at least some I happen to know of.

All money that comes to your accounts is not income nor should be
declared as such. You can, for example, borrow or lend money, and if
there's no interest involved there's no income either nor any need to
declare such debts with your taxes (at least if your country has no
property tax).

More to the point, you can use your own account to handle money
belonging to someone else, including an association, without any tax
implications, and in many countries law also recognizes unregistered
or unincorporated associations (with various limitations on what they
can or can't do).

Whether any incoming money is ultimately taxable or needs to be
declared depends on all kinds of things, but often, e.g., membership
fees are tax exempt.

> If you buy services, you buy them for you, and they become your
> legal responsibility.

That is not quite accurate either. You can buy services even for an
unregistered association. You will be responsible for them, but if you
try to, say, take them away from the association, its other members
can sue you and win, depending on details of course.

> You can do so as a group, no problem, but you are not magically "not
> a legal entity".

I'm not quite sure what that means, but certainly even an unregistered
association can be a legal entity.

Registering or incorporating an association changes the situation, in
particular it limits personal responsibility and makes a number of
things legally much easier and better defined, but it's not a totally
clear cut, black-and-white distinction.

Anyway, you are absolutely right that there are all kinds of legal
complications and they should be well researched before incorporating
NCSG in any country.

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen