Comment by fossmaintainer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fossmaintainer | Hacker News Reader

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Here's the actual e-mail the fund sent:

Hey ******, I hope you're doing well. I apologise for the long delay on this disbursal from our end, and for not reaching out to you sooner.

I am writing to you with an update on GitHub Sponsors, your preferred mode of payment. Unfortunately, we're currently unable to process payments through GitHub Sponsors, Liberapay, OpenCollective, or similar platforms due to regulatory constraints. We still have no clarity on when this will become possible. We shared some context on this earlier here: https://floss.fund/blog/second-tranche-2025-anniversary/

We recommend that we move ahead with a wire transfer (although it involves some paperwork!). This involves:

1) Tax Residency Certificate (TRC) from your country of residence/incorporation for the current year.

2) Signed copy of the "No Permanent Establishment in India Declaration" (Template attached)

3) Form 10F to avoid double taxation for non-Indian entities and individuals. This is an online form that has to be filled out on the Indian Tax Department website. Instructions on how to fill it out are attached to this email. Please refer to this FAQ for more details.

4) Service Agreement – Please fill in the sections marked in yellow and send it back to us (Attached)

5) Invoice for the grant amount (sample attached with required fields highlighted, feel free to use your own invoice template if needed. Please mention "project development support" in the invoice description).

Once you have these, please send them over so that we can begin processing the payment.

Please note that these documents are required in our jurisdiction (India) for processing foreign payments. A percentage of the payment will be withheld as per the DTAA (Double-Taxation Avoidance Agreement) between India and your country, which the recipient can claim back while filing tax returns in their country. The specific withholding rate depends on the DTAA regulations between your country and India.

If you have any questions, please feel free to write to us.

Thank you once again for your patience

These are perfectly normal requests .

These are needed to reduce withholding taxes and claim treaty benefits .

I'm not giving this kind of information over email ever. You better have some secure and compliant platform for me to submit these forms over or you can f off.

If you’re turning down meaningful amounts of money because you consider this information too sensitive to share, you are a crazy person.

I imagine they're willing to accept them a different way. That email doesn't even specifically ask for the forms to be emailed. It just says to "send them over".

Also, I'd argue there are ways to make it reasonably secure over email. An encrypted attachment with a securely pre-shared key doesn't seem too risky IMO.

Looking at the required paperwork, I agree with Pocketbase to refuse funding.

If you were already setup as a non-profit entity with 501c3 US taxes (or similar in other locales), this would be straightforward. Or, even if you were a for-profit company taking part with an LLC or other corporate structure. In those cases, you probably already have an accountant or tax advisor to help handle this stuff. For smaller individual level contributors, I can see how the extra paperwork and overhead could create enough of a hassle to make it not worthwhile. Which is sad.

It looks like the author here is from Bulgaria, so who knows what other hassles they would have on their side.

Why? I don't see it as particularly onerous. They are simply complying with their country's KYC requirements. I've gone through worse to accept payments from US citizens with a US corporation. KYC/AML is annoying but its pretty unavoidable unless you want to do crypto.

It's not really kyc . It's just standard procedure to claim Double tax treaty benefits.

You can look at the us W8-BEN

Where did you get that email from?

That seems reasonable. It mostly looks necessary to comply with tax and banking laws.

invoice for fund disbursement? are they trying to donate as expenses?

Most US companies take a tax deduction for charitable donations, I don't see why that wouldn't be the same for an Indian firm.

No it's just that the Indian company is required to withhold taxes . But they want to use the double taxation treaty to claim benefits to reduce it

Paying individual OSS contributors without a service agreement is not a charitable donation with regard to taxes. It's not a deductible business expense and typically leads to double taxation.

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