Questions about starting a not-for-profit knitting pattern business
Posted by deleted 3 years, 8 months ago to Business
I would appreciate some business advice.
I’ve designed a knitting pattern. It’s quite unique, and I know lots of fellow knitters who would like to knit it.
But here’s the thing. Being an Objectivist, I have no intention of subjecting myself to illegal government rules and regulations.
Yes, it’s just a knitting pattern, but if I sold enough of them, I’d have to pay taxes on my profits, and goodness knows what else the government would require of me.
I want no part of that.
But I do want to get the pattern out there. You see, there’s a yarn dyer who was viciously attacked last year by the cancel cultists, and they nearly destroyed her. Designers no longer wish to work with her.
I designed my pattern with her yarn. I have lots of other original ideas, and think we’d make a good team.
My husband made the brilliant suggestion that I could ask people to donate to a charity of my choice instead of sending me money.
It’s a genius idea, but I have questions.
1. I’ve chosen a name for my “design house”, and will put the name and logo on the lower corner of every page, and a watermark over every picture. (I can’t tell you how many designers I know that have been ripped off). Do I have to file for a trademark, copywrite or something on my house name?
2. Once I’ve chosen a charity, how do I get the money to them without having to answer to the government? If 100% of my profits go to charity, will I have to prove it to the taxman?
Or, if I somehow bypass payment directly to me, and have buyers make the donations directly, how do I ensure payment has been made to that charity before I send them the pattern?
Because I’ll be darned if I want money going to someplace evil, like Antifa, BLM, the Democrats or Planned Parenthood.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I’ve designed a knitting pattern. It’s quite unique, and I know lots of fellow knitters who would like to knit it.
But here’s the thing. Being an Objectivist, I have no intention of subjecting myself to illegal government rules and regulations.
Yes, it’s just a knitting pattern, but if I sold enough of them, I’d have to pay taxes on my profits, and goodness knows what else the government would require of me.
I want no part of that.
But I do want to get the pattern out there. You see, there’s a yarn dyer who was viciously attacked last year by the cancel cultists, and they nearly destroyed her. Designers no longer wish to work with her.
I designed my pattern with her yarn. I have lots of other original ideas, and think we’d make a good team.
My husband made the brilliant suggestion that I could ask people to donate to a charity of my choice instead of sending me money.
It’s a genius idea, but I have questions.
1. I’ve chosen a name for my “design house”, and will put the name and logo on the lower corner of every page, and a watermark over every picture. (I can’t tell you how many designers I know that have been ripped off). Do I have to file for a trademark, copywrite or something on my house name?
2. Once I’ve chosen a charity, how do I get the money to them without having to answer to the government? If 100% of my profits go to charity, will I have to prove it to the taxman?
Or, if I somehow bypass payment directly to me, and have buyers make the donations directly, how do I ensure payment has been made to that charity before I send them the pattern?
Because I’ll be darned if I want money going to someplace evil, like Antifa, BLM, the Democrats or Planned Parenthood.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Then again, I could be wrong!
Near the end of a fiscal year, if you deem profits applicable to charity, donate them. Get an accountant to advise on charitable donations prior to your business start. You will have 4 partners in your business. A lawyer, a banker, an accountant...and your hostile partner...The Gov
It's much easier to get it right the first time, than it is to convince the IRS you need to be re-considered. It will be harder the second/third time, trust me.
Also, the IRS considers that since you aren't paying taxes, you can be a WHOLE lot more prompt with filing on time. Therefore, penalties and eventual banishment from nonprofit status will follow if you don't do it right. If you lose your charitable status, you will be paying direct income tax on all the income going forward as a sole proprietor unless you choose to form a (editing for clarity) for-profit corporation. Also, while you CAN take an income from the charitable organization for the purpose of managing this business, you will then have to pay income tax personally on the money you receive in salary, plus SS and Medicare, etc.
As you can see, the deeper you go, the more involved it gets. My advice: Keep it VERY, VERY simple. And get a CPA.
Here is some practical advice surrounding Charitable organizations (if it doesn't link properly, copy/paste):
https://blueavocado.org/finance/your-...
Now, I get what you mean about not wanting to deal with all this, but you ignore taxes at your peril. Just saying. Get yourself a CPA. No legit CPA will suggest you not file/pay taxes, whether you want to or not. But they can make it easier for you to get it right.
1. There is a minimum amount of income. Until you reach that, the government is considering the income to be like selling your sofa to your friend, not an economical activity. In Denmark it's 50k dkk (roughly 7k usd).
2. Once you reach this income level, the tax is paid based on profit, not income. So spending the income on marketing causes (aka having your logo at the charity org you choose) can potentially decrease your tax to 0.
3. If you have a certain income, you can also decrease the profit (taxable income) by spending on advisory, to lawyers, auditors, accountants, etc., who can explain easily, how to support developing countries, who in exchange can provide you with very advantageus tax schemes in their country (off-shore). Please note - today it's considered to be highly unethical. Illegal... for that you need to mess it up a lot according to my understanding.
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4. How much do you rely on social media for your business? If not much, you can just leave it. Once you are offline, the 21st century internet warriors can't really effect you. They are only heros from behind their keyboards (look, what I'm doing just right now - typing my message ;-) ).
5. Be faster. Before they can ruin your reputation, go ahead and do a campaign to retain your existing customers. Let them know about your position, so that when they hear the news, they already know the background story. Once the news are out, you can gather new customers too, from people seeing your side and sympathizing with your ideas. This way you can turn a disadvantage to an advantage.
6. Hire a PR expert for the time being and consult on managing the cause. They are experts and can surely help more than anybody based on a short post.
I hope you can use at least some of it. Good luck with your business.
What we need is a place to come together and exchange what words and what good we can sustainably "bring to the table". I'm speaking in general but also specifically to this skill set and circle of folks who share it (my brother has recently picked up knitting, even though it's un-popular - therefore frowned upon - as a hobby for a guy) and I too am looking to find a better way. Here's what I've got so far, in case you can find a way to use it for yourself:
If you can find a place to come together with others like you locally and each lay out what skills/materials you've found or developed and can easily/sustainably share/spare, you all will be better off. If you can find a place in this world wide web where your cooperative symbiotic group can come together with other like-minded friend groups of hobbyists/creators in other regions, & exchange cooperative symbiotic words and good actual things, then more power to you (both figuratively & literally).
When you're a piece of good healthy fruit dangling from the very tip of a branch of a much larger tree with a perspective that can see bad fruit dangling from an adjacent branch (that is only sapping away the life of the tree while giving only more of it's disease in exchange), the fact that it's not in your power directly to cut off the dead fruit could be enough to drive you crazy & distract you from the source (if you let it). Kudos to you for being a do-er & looking for real workable solutions! Your friendly sharing between others in your hobby or branch could very well decrease your cost of materials to make nicer things out of, and then finding ways to share your best with other branches of this tree is tapping into communion at the tree trunk and root levels (which actually do have the power to cut off the circulation to the bad branches/fruit). It has to be as pure and as fair to all who are aware, involved, committed, and assessing with you in it, but I am convinced that better friends and more symbiotic value can be found through freely exchanging with others who actually make & do things in the real world. I'm a flint-knapper, and just through the online flint-knapping groups as well as local I've met who want to learn, I've found some good sustainable exchanges with some (and some regrettable with others who I took a chance on), but it's been more from random chance. Finding/making an organized place to share what we each can sustainable spare could certainly find much better "good trades" (of ideas, information and actual things) in the real world. P1 may want what P2 has to spare while P2 wants what P3 has to spare, but with a free intuitively organized framework to come together on, larger circles can be drawn. P3 might find that P1 has something s/he needs, allowing 1 to get from 2, 2 to get from 3, and 3 to get from 1 (a win-win-win situation).
"Where?" is the question. I think we may have to start working from home figuring out for ourselves how to build more real person 2 person interactions again (pulling out the hooks of increasingly more connection in exchange for increasingly less actual value gained), and keep that local group space of people who are actually involved in your life & well-being as sacred and separate as we can manage from the more broad, less local altar-net exchanges. Just my thoughts. I wish I had a better outline for a workable solution.
One person, the Sockmatician, had a nervous breakdown.
The yarn dyer whose yarn I’m working with committed the crime of defending another yarn dyer who was under attack. For that, she herself came under attack, and it was vicious. Knitting shows she was supposed to sell at canceled her vendor’s booth. Her social media was under attack. Everything was done to try to destroy her business. I’ll include links to her blog posts.
https://www.tuskenknits.com/blogs/tus...
https://www.tuskenknits.com/blogs/tus...
The knitting community went through a major upheaval in 2019. It was a tsunami.
Basically, the world’s biggest knitting social media site went full-on lefty fascist, and began a censorship campaign. I’ll include a link that explains things more fully.
https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/03/...