[Foundation-l] [ANNOUNCEMENT] Greenspan illustration project

Sat Nov 3 09:25:17 UTC 2007

I hope and agree that purchasing some specific works makes sense and avoids
paperwork hassle.

But I'm not an attorney or tax accountant (thank god...)

-george

On Nov 3, 2007 1:47 AM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Nov 2, 2007 6:22 PM, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think you may misunderstand.  The concern is that the WMF will now,
> for
> > the first time that I know of (but I could be ignorant), be paying or
> > purchasing something (good, or services) from members of the community,
> and
> > not from a normal vendor or paying an internal employee.
> >
> > The WMF might be required, under some interpretations of tax law in the
> US
> > and how the payments are structured, to get a US IRS tax form (form 1099
> > probably) for each person it paid for an illustration.  Which is a lot
> of
> > administrative and recordkeeping headache and requires things like a
> social
> > security number to be provided, etc.
> >
> > If it's structured so that the foundation is buying the rights to an
> image,
> > then that may be outside the contractor / pay for work structure enough
> to
> > be safe.  But this is legal / accountant territory.
> >
> >
> > -george william herbert
>
> Yeah, there's generally a difference between hiring someone to do a
> bunch of work (as a contractor or employee) and buying a particular
> piece of art (or rights) from someone that's non-commissioned. if
> you're a contractor, the person paying you needs to provide tax
> documentation. If you're an independent artist selling individual
> pieces, then it's usually up to you as a self-employed individual to
> figure out your own taxes. (Imagine an art show: if someone walks up
> and buys a painting for $100, the artist doesn't ask them to fill out
> a 1099 along with writing a check). But I don't have any idea about
> non-US situations, IANAL etc.
>
> Basically, it's the difference between whether the WMF intends to
> commission particular illustrators to do work on an ongoing basis as
> contractors, versus choosing to pay for various nice pieces that may
> get submitted. As far as I could tell this was pretty vague in the
> resolution, but it sounded like the latter?
>
> -- phoebe
>
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-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com