Nonprofit for religious blog? If I write a religious blog (specifically with posts explaining the meaning of Bible verses, similar to sermons but written instead of spoken), could I start a 501c3 to run the site, donate money to the 501c3 to pay for Web hosting, and write off the donations on my tax return?
The IRS page &quot;Exemption Requirements - 501(c)(3) Organizations&quot; describes the basic requirements for an organization to qualify as tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3). The linked page &quot;Application Process&quot; starts a sequence walking a potential applicant throgh the requirements. Key requirements are: Form: a 501(c)(3) organization must be a trust, a corporation, or an association; Purpose: a 501(c)(3) organization must have an exempt purpose. &quot;Advancement of religion&quot; is one acceptable purpose; Benefits: a 501(c)(3) organization must not have any of its funds be for the benefit of any shareholder, member or private individual, and must not serve private intersts (as the IRS defiens that term). See https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/inurement-private-benefit-charitable-organizations for more detail. Note that an application must be signed and filed with information about the organization. An annual filing is required thereafter. Note also that under current US Federal tax law, only contributions in excess of 10% of a taxpayer's Adjusted Gross income (AGI) may be deducted. This is a somewhat recent change, previously the limit was much lower (2.5% of AGI at one time). This means that many people will see little or no tax benefit unless they contribute a fairly sizable amount. But one would be wise to consult one's tax advisor or one's past year tax return to see what the AGI was, and learn what amount of deduction is likely in future years. Of course, Congress can change the tax laws at any time. Note also that deductions from income only save a taxpayer his or her marginal rate on taxation. That is, if the taxpayer is in a 15% bracket, a contribution of $100 more than the AGI threshold will save the taxpayer $15. Contributions up to and including the AGI threshold will have no effect on the tax owed. Once money is contributed to a 501(c)(3) organization it may not be simply taken back, even if the contributor is also the operator of the organization.
I'd like to sell t-shirts with the direwolve emblem of the "House Stark" in Game of Thrones, and of course, I've been immediately asking myself if HBO which produces the serie actually had some copyright on that emblem. This is not a close case. Your proposal, or anything remotely similar, would almost certainly constitute a copyright violation and result in a lawsuit by the producers of the show if not done with a license from the company. They would easily win this lawsuit. The damages that they were awarded would greatly exceed the amount of profits you made from your sales (realistically, more than a $1,000 per T-Shirt plus many tens of thousands of dollars of legal fees and costs would be typical). You would probably have to go bankrupt and some or all of the damages award against you might survive bankruptcy because your copyright violation was an intentional act. Every episode of the TV show is a copyrighted work and what you are proposing would be a "derivative work" since it is derived from the copyrighted TV show. Derivative works made without a license from a a copyright holder are a violation of copyright laws. There are also probably myriad specifically trademarked symbols and phrases that are registered with the appropriate government official (the Patent and Trademark Office for U.S. trademarks). So, it is highly likely that there would be a trademark violation as well if a license was not obtained. Your basic business model is at its very heart and essence fundamentally illegal. There is nothing you can do to fix it without getting written permission from the publishers who have probably long ago sold the rights to do this to somebody else for an immense amount of money. You should abandon this idea and try to come up with another business venture instead.
According to Wikipedia, the organization that holds Vatican copyrights has the following policy: [N]ews organizations can quote from the pope's speeches, encyclicals and other writings without charge. They can also publish full texts free provided they cite Vatican copyright ... but if a text is published separately ... payment is due. You say that no Vatican copyright was cited, which is too bad - they'd have a good argument that they already had permission. it must have a copyright Correct. Published or unpublished, it has a copyright from the moment it was fixed. it's a translation, which require official permission. Translations are considered derivative works, which is a right protected under copyright. So you need permission, fair use, or some other law that allows you to use it. it's the whole document, and so not under fair use Well, not so fast. There are four factors included in fair use, and that's only one of them. The factors are: (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; Is the website offering this work for religious purposes, or for profit? (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; I'm not really sure where religious works fall under this factor, honestly. (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; The whole work is used, so this factor would be against fair use. (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. Is there a market for this work? Does the Vatican sell it, or use it to drive traffic, or anything? If so, this factor would be against fair use. If not, the translation probably does not affect the market for the work, and this factor would be in favor of fair use.
The law related to the internal organization of corporations is a matter of state law. You cite the correct authority: The board of directors of a nonprofit corporation shall consist of one or more members. The number of directors shall be fixed by or in the manner provided in the bylaws. If not so fixed, the number of directors shall be the same as that stated in the articles or three if no number is so stated. 15 Pa. Stat. and Consol. Stat. Ann. § 5723 (West). The statement of the state attorney general is merely a suggestion. Although, in an entity with audited financial statements the audited financial reports must disclose that the organization lacks &quot;adequate internal financial controls&quot;. But, non-profit entities such as charitable trusts or &quot;corporations sole&quot; (such as most legally distinct entities in the Roman Catholic Church) have only a single person with full control over everything that a Board of Directors does. The IRS likewise does not impose a minimum number of directors for a 501(c)(3) organization, or for any other kind of corporation. Nothing in the relevant statue requires that it have more than one, and many non-profits (e.g. probably a majority of churches) have only one director.
This is pretty much the entire purpose of a redirect, and almost always permissible. If your witness has given an unhelpfully incomplete answer, it is not just &quot;advisable&quot; to ask those follow-up questions, but perhaps mandatory as an ethical matter.
Non-Profits Need Not Have Owners But Must Have A Lawful Purpose Any non-profit company, for example, a 501(c)(3), is ownerless and can be run by a self-perpetuating board if desired, rather than having delegates that provide an outside source for new board members. In that case you have to set forth a purpose of the company or trust, to which its assets and profits must be used, and it must be managed in accordance with that purpose. You can also have a "private foundation" that is effectively ownerless, again with a designated charitable purpose. Generally speaking, the law limits how much compensation can be paid to officers and employees of such a company and restricts self-dealing transactions by such a company. You probably cannot create a valid trust or business with no beneficiaries and no designated charitable purpose which is supposed to merely accumulate its profits and assets. Ownerless Cooperatives Are An Oxymoron Your reference in this and other posts to an "ownerless cooperative" is basically an oxymoron. A cooperative is an entity owned by a class of people who have a contractual relationship with the entity (usually consumers or producers) who are the owners of the company with voting control and who are entitled to an adjustment of their transaction prices with the cooperative via a rebate or surplus check proportionate to the dollar volume of their dealings with the cooperative (Northwest Mutual, must rural electric companies, and most credit unions would be examples of consumer cooperatives, Ocean Spray is a good example of a producers cooperative). An ownerless entity is pretty much by definition not a cooperative. An excellent overview of forms of entity organization other than investor owned stock corporations can be found in The Ownership of Enterprise by Henry Hansmann. The Life Of The Law Is Not Math Or Logic Honestly, it sounds like, in your several posts on the subject, that you are attempting the hide the ball of an ulterior purposes which is material to the legality and organization of an entity. The law is not like science or mathematics. You can't prove a bunch of isolated propositions and then string them together logically. The law operates on an entire comprehensive "fact pattern" and even if every step of your chain of reasoning to an ultimately result is supported by legal authority, this does not mean that this will be the result you get when you put all of the pieces together. That kind of logical reasoning doesn't work in a legal context. The heading of this section is a paraphrase of a famous statement about the law by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience... The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics. from "The Common Law" (1881) at page 1. Blockchains Are Not The Legal Innovation That They Claim To Be Using blockchain technology to manage "tokens" of voting control in an entity is ultimately completely irrelevant. Blockchain technology is just another alternative to certificated shares, shares kept on an ownership ledger, or shares kept through secondary shareholding intermediaries or brokers. The technology used to keep track of voting control or economic ownership is irrelevant, and some common entities (e.g. homeowner's associations) have ownership that is basically determined via a crude public blockchain called the county clerk and recorder's records. People who think that blockchains provide any significant legal innovation into anything (e.g. here) are fundamentally misguided and typically are not people familiar with the law who have misconceptions about how the law works. Also, contrary to the hype, blockchains are not fraud-proof and indeed, involve serious systemic risks of instability because an error in an old transaction can disrupt lots of current claims. Claims such as those made here that blockchain transactions are irrefutable are naive and basically false. A block chain is a bit like a real property record system without an adverse possession rule to make ancient glitches irrelevant. Moreover, blockchains are a solution to a non-problem. Authenticating ownership and voting rights, economic entitlements, and corporate actions is something that has never posed a very significant economic problem ever since writing was invented. These are economic problems that were already effectively solved in the days of the Minoans, and widespread ownership of well authenticated entities by numerous ever shifting groups of owners was a problem well in hand by the days of the British East India Company. Anonymous Ownership Or Contribution Records Are Illegal Truly anonymous ownership, however, is legally prohibited, even though ownership need not be made a matter of public record. In the case of for profit entities, by securities regulation which requires disclosure for purposes of exercising voting rights and for disclosing large blocks of ownership as required by law, and for purposes of tax law. In the case of non-profit entities, it is prohibited by virtue of laws regulating private foundations that impose tax requirements when certain concentrations of contributions come from a small, related group of people. In the case of political organizations, campaign finance laws require disclosure.
You cannot call yourself anything that is deceptive or misleading. Given that "Spiritual Councillor Practitioner" doesn't mean anything you should be OK. However, be aware that if you give advice in a professional capacity and people act on that advice to their detriment then they can sue you. That said, taking money from people for the provision of a service for which you do not have any particular qualifications may be unethical and could get you in some kind of hot water.
Currently there is nowhere in the USA where polygamy is legal. So regardless of their sexual or gender expression or orientation, being married to MORE THAN ONE person at the same time is illegal. If, however, it turned out that someone had more than one spouse at their death, I'm sure that property distribution would be a matter for the probate court to sort out. As far as legally-married &quot;trans spouses&quot;, for lack of a better term, I don't see why that would that impact inheritance in any way?