[Foundation-l] the easy way or the less easy way

Mon Jun 19 11:35:12 UTC 2006

On 6/19/06, Michael R. Irwin <michael_irwin at verizon.net> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> >  IIRC, oregon is usually recognized for very liberal
> >non-profit corporate laws.
> >
> >
> I doubt they are all that much different to justify a relocation.
>
If they allow members to not make their address public I'd say that
justifies a relocation.

> A stand out local feature is there is no state sales tax.   Which means
> by current U.S. Federal law governing transactions over the Internet.

That doesn't really apply to non-profits.  The specific feature I was
thinking about was the ability to have as few as one director.  But as
it turns out this was Nevada anyway.  Nevada allows bearer
certificates for its for-profit corporations.

Here we go.  Nevada statutes 82.181(1): "A corporation shall keep a
copy of the following records at its registered office:" (c) "If the
corporation has members, a members' ledger or a duplicate members'
ledger, revised annually, containing the names, alphabetically
arranged, of all persons who are members of the corporation, showing
their places of residence, if known and the class of membership held
by each"  So "places of residence" are only required "if known".

Yes, in order to be a member of the organization you have to give your
name.  That part seems reasonable to me.  Even if you want to
contribute to Wikipedia (for instance) pseudonymously you can still do
that.  There's no requirement that your real name be tied to your
username.  For the purposes of meeting the activity requirements you
might want to tie at least one pseudonym to your real name without
making this information public, though.  Hopefully one day Wikipedia
will make it possible to contribute without making even your pseudonym
public.

I'm sure Nevada isn't the only jurisdiction which has this feature.
Jimbo presumably chose Florida because it's where he lives, and for no
other particular reason.

> I could not find an official Oregon state site via google which is
> rather irritating and disappointing.   How the hell can we be a nation
> of laws if the laws are secret, unknown, or published in an expensive
> proprietary format nobody wishes to invest in?

I found http://www.leg.state.or.us/ors/ by typing in "oregon statutes"
and hitting "I'm feeling lucky".

Anthony