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So, I'm a lawyer, but not at all a tax lawyer.

I was talking to a tax lawyer the other day, though. I told her that I heard a lot of public-interest journalism projects were getting rejected for tax-exempt status, and it seemed like a problem in the tax laws -- we haven't adjusted to a world where a lot of journalism is done by non-profits. A lot like this story, but with journalism instead of software development.

She said she had looked at some of those applications, and she would have rejected them too. She thought the problem was journalism startups haven't figured out that they need to talk to a tax lawyer before filing important documents with the IRS. (And, yes, she's donating time to help with that, incidentally.)

Like I said, I'm not a tax lawyer. But I would wait to get a perspective from someone who knows this field before I concluded that the IRS is really opposed to free software in general. And I would do this kind of thing through a lawyer who specializes in it. Remember that you're helping out more than just you -- if you do it right you're paving the way for people like you. If you do it wrong, you're inviting bad decisions with broad statements like the ones quoting in this article.




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