Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Seeking Federal Non-profit Information

[Fred H. Olson (fholson]

Jim Snyder-Grant <danasg [at] newview.org>
is the author of the message below but due to a problem it was posted
by the Fred the list manager: owner-cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org
--------------------  FORWARDED MESSAGE FOLLOWS --------------------

(Scott E. Bogard of  Sunward Cohousing in Ann Arbor Michigan 
asked about tax exemption for the development entity)

New View (Acton MA) decided that the cost of getting tax 
exemption was way more than we would likely pay in taxes, 
at least for 10 years or so. It looked like it would be expensive 
and not clearly doable to write up our bylaws to meet the 
tax-exempt standards. Instead, we made sure to show no
or little profit at year end to minimize any taxes due: not 
hard to do, in this business, with a bit of cash flow management.  
One key piece of that was to make sure that the big chunks 
of money flowing in from members during the development 
process were almost always structured and documented 
as loans that were to be paid back as a reduction in house 
price, instead of as income.

-Jim Snyder-Grant
Where the newly opened common house is a big success! Planned & spontaneous
events happening every day. We have various comment boards up that are
collecting a lot of ideas for the common house living committee to sift
through.