Proposal: Memberships instead of tickets

Lovely. Yes definitely legal help needed. I assume the membership instead of a ticket has the benefit of not being taxable with VAT, which is a big bonus. I am only familiar with this in the UK. Deutschland could certainly be a different bureaucracy beast altogether ;)

VAT Liability of a Membership Subscription
The default position is that VAT is charged on any supply at the standard rate (20%). This is unless it can be argued that all or part of of the subscription should have a different VAT liability. The most likely alternative is for the subscription to be VAT exempt.

Subscriptions that can be treated as VAT exempt include those charged by professional bodies, learned societies, trade unions, political parties and philanthropic organisations. HMRC interpret these categories narrowly. For example they hold to a very traditional view of what constitutes a profession.

From: http://plvat.co.uk/how-membership-vat-works/

I can do a bit of research! What comes to my head right away is the following areas: membership means that we are building a big big verein and we need to make all members part of our vereinsstructure and routines, legal/insurance: I am not sure if we are considered a public event if we only invite members (so that might be interesting for us)
Also, there was a reason last year from a finance & bookkeeping perspective wht we didnt wanted to do it. @Alexx do you have more details?

We are talking a lot of 'obstacles' here. But can anyone explain to me what'd be the best argument FOR membership over tickets?

Reasons I can think about:
- we are a participatory event and a membership holds more symbolic and practical participation

• Every Kiez Burn Participant is an automatic member of the Verein and hence gets to participate in Verein-Stuff outside of the event

• we do things as the borderland does, obviously? Chr.

• There might be positive results in terms of GEMA & taxes?

Are those all the arguments? I don't think so. Please enlighten me.

COLLECTION THREAD - professional advice & input I collect(ed)

Alex (Wilde Möhre)
"Geht es dabei um die Art der Veranstaltung, also nichtöffentlich vs. öffentlich? Ich könnte mir vorstellen, dass man bei einer nicht öffentlichen Vereinsfeier die GEMA umgehen könnte. Denkbar wäre auch, dass die freiwillige Arbeit im Verein nicht angemeldet werden muss. Theoretisch müsste das gehen. Aber dabei sollte man sich wahrscheinlich von einem Steuerbüro helfen lassen. Wir als Möhre haben jedoch auch gute Erfahrung damit gemacht, alle Beteiligten als kurzzeitig Beschäftigte anzumelden. Für uns funktioniert das auf legalem Weg alles ganz gut."

What is the benefit of doing this, other than that's what Borderland does?

@chmac yeah the budget piece might probably be right because this is usually the first thing we do (determining how much income we need to cover the event and week51 costs) but this is more an excel exercise the money doesnt have to flow that early. Meaning we can generate income later (with selling tickets) as long as the areas know what to work with.

Would having memberships vs tickets change the laws that apply to the event? Essentially once it is only memberships it is no longer considered an event open to the public in certain jurisdictions which can change the laws and permitting that apply to an event.

Personally I would set the minimum closer to 40.

I know Tiers aren't your proposal but what are the reasons people don't want tiered sales?

I personally am strongly in favor of the proposal to sell temporary memberships instead of tickets, because:
* Language frames thinking: instead of buying a ticket, you buy a right to participate.
* We can start selling memberships earlier. I would argue this is a huge benefit, not necessarily for €€€, but because of the buy-in this creates + poses additional benefits for integration with the Dreams platform etc.
* Less taxes (lots of other Vereine do this thing too, where you pay membership to use the tennis courts or go hiking "for free" or ...)

Would allow us to collect money before we know all the details of the date and location, which in turn allows for easier planning of some areas once we know how much money is available.

they would be temporary memberships.

Yeah I think the point he is making is more about actually paying people and therefore have to deal with all the scoial insurance stuff...which doesnt apply for us

Fair questions. It seemed like there was a bit of chat about “we can’t plan until we have a budget” at Sunday’s session, but maybe it’s less of an issue than it appeared to me. We could start a poll here to collect opinions. Personally I imagine that it’s easier to agree on a venue and lock down toilets, professional first aid, and so on the sooner we have a budget. I’m mostly motivated by the idea of it enabling a “radical membership” sale. I also don’t personally know so much about this idea, it’s something that I was told other folks were considering which is why I opened this thread. Maybe somebody else has better answers than me.

Ah, ok. So people could buy a membership which may or may not include entry to an event that may or may not happen? Do we really need income so far in advance that we have to do that? Has the lack of early income been a problem in the past? Do we really need any income/cash before we have a mostly certain venue for the event? For what? We normally start selling tickets in early March... is that really too late to start getting income? Why?

Genuine questions

We used to work with tiered sales so to motivate people to buy a ticket early.
And then it changed, Otto & Jan Thomas decided that, I believe because:
* for accounting reasons it is harder
* makes ticket transfers more complicated
* In general it just makes things more complicated