The year end is coming and just before Christmas you will be confronted with all kind of charity organizations that would like you to contribute. The Dutch are known for being good donators in this respect, but maybe the recent crisis has changed that a bit.
Charity donations
In the Dutch income tax return you can deduct donations made to charity. The condition is that the charity organization needs to have been acknowledged by the Dutch tax office, which implies most of the foreign charity organizations do not qualify.
A donation is tax deductible when the donation made can be proven with a written document. The donation is tax deductible when the amount donated exceeded EUR 60 plus the donated amount is at least 1% of the taxable income. The maximum deductible amount equals 10% of the taxable income. If you have a tax partner, then the taxable income of your tax partner is added to the 1% minimum threshold requirement.
Donations made to cultural institutions recognized as such by the Dutch tax office, will result in a 25% increase of the deductible amount up to a EUR 1.250 amount max.
Practice
We file more than 1000 income tax returns per year and maybe 3 clients report the amount of charity donation and most of the time the minimum threshold is not reached. That is the effect of the charity donation in the income tax return.
For a charity organization to become a recognized organization involves additional administrative requirements that are rather costly. On top of that there needs to be a management to control the activities who earn a decent salary to say the least. I always wonder when I give the EUR 2 at the door if this collection throughout the year will be enough to cover the salary costs. That implies no charity has been done yet with the money.
Bolivia
My dear client Stella DeCunha and her husband Richard gave up their well paid jobs a couple of years ago and they stumbled on children living in Bolivia that were in need of attention. Attention in any type of attention you can imagine with a child. The intention was to stay a short while in Bolivia, but that became in the end more than a year. I recently met Stella and she is planning soon to return again to Bolivia. Stella also explained to me that this organization will not apply for the charity status in the Netherlands, as the costs involved are that huge, it would help their organization more not to spend that money on formalities, but on the actual children.
Orange Tax Services
We offer you the possibility to make a donation to the organization of Stella DeCunha to help the children in Bolivia. This is a donation that does not qualify for a tax deduction. Then again, no costs are made to create and maintain this status, no managing director or employee costs are made, everything goes to the children and you can have a look yourself or ask what was done with the donated money yourself.
Please visit:
http://boliviadigna.org/en/home/
Please donate:
https://www.razoo.com/story/Bolivia-Digna-Sponsor-A-Teacher
About Bolivia Digna
Bolivia Digna is a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) founded in Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2006. Its objective is to promote and defend the rights of infants, children, adolescents, senior citizens and other vulnerable social groups living in exclusion and poverty.
Since 2007, we have been developing programs aimed at social development, the prevention of violence, the protection and defense of children who are victims of violence, education in Human Rights and Responsibilities, responsible leadership, and promotion of Christian values.
We run several projects, listed on our projects pages. Each of these projects, while assisting the target group, also has the aim of promoting and instilling a culture of volunteering and making service a way of life for all. To this end, as of early 2015, more than 50 Bolivians and close to 30 international volunteers have been part of our program for periods of between one month and over a year at a time.
OUR VISION
All people, and especially infants and children, should have adequate living conditions (spiritual, material, health and social) and should have the opportunity to fully exercise their rights.
OUR MISSION
Through educational programs and social assistance programs, we promote better living conditions and create more opportunities for advancement for people, particularly young people, living in poor or marginal conditions.
OUR TEAM
The happiness and well-being of the kids that attend our projects is thanks to the generous contributions of our donors and partners and especially the hard work of our group of dedicated volunteers.
Continuity and sustainability is ensured through the efforts of the core Bolivia Digna team:
- Álvaro Dante González Gámez.Founder, Director and Visionary. Dante is a Social Communicator with nearly 20 years of experience in social work. He is a fountain of knowledge about Bolivia, its history, its politics and social conditions. The foundation is his life and he is infectiously passionate about it. He spends most of his time persuading donors and partners to contribute; educating and scaring the volunteers with accounts of the realities of life as a child in a poor family in Bolivia; and entertaining everyone in the office/house with incredibly bad jokes told in even worse English.
- Andrea Rodríguez López.Administrative Assistant and Accountant. Andrea is a degree qualified Senior Accounting Technician. She tries as hard as humanly possible to create order out of the administrative chaos that follows Dante around. She also keeps things ticking over in the house, organizes all the logistics and makes sure we actually have enough money in the bank before we start a new venture.
- María Paina Céspedes.Head Cook. Doña Maria is responsible for health of the volunteers and staff who live here. She keeps the place clean and tidy and, as a specialist in traditional Bolivian food, she prepares a delicious lunch each day for up to 20 people.
- Adrián Cardozo Ríos.Educator, Volunteer Coordinator and Social Communicator. Adrian is responsible for the coordination of projects and trying to keep track of which volunteers are available at any one time so he can assign them to projects. He also looks after our social media and in his spare time puts together programs for the adolescents that we work with.
- Pablo Zambrana Monduela.Educator and Location Coordinator. Pablo is responsible for ensuring the smooth running of one of our locations. He ensures the projects are tailored to the kids that come to his location, provides structure and continuity for the kids and ensures the volunteers are taking their fair share of the stress. He is also an expert in origami and constructing interesting models out of junk.
- Nancy Ledezma Patiño.Educator and Location Coordinator. Nancy, like Pablo, is responsible for the smooth running of one of our locations. She is also a qualified psychologist and helps with diagnosis and recommendations in some of the difficult cases. She is a talented artist.
- Stella DeCunha.Operations Manager. Stella is a very experienced project and people manager. She watches over and provides valuable input to each of the other leaders and makes sure that everything runs smoothly in the projects. She also manages the relationship with our larger partners, looks after the cat and helps with fundraising.
- Richard Walford. Richard has a lot of experience in running software development teams, but nobody, we suspect not even him, really knows what he does. Whatever it is, people usually notice when he stops doing it. He fixes things around the house, helps look after the IT infrastructure, keeps an eye on the finances, looks after the herb garden, comes up with eccentric ideas for projects with the kids, takes 2000 photos of reptiles, bores people with long stories recounted in broken Spanish and runs the sports school when there is no volunteer better qualified.
This core team is augmented by local volunteers from our partner organizations and by international volunteers from various countries. We have so far benefitted from volunteers from Ireland, Spain, Holland, Germany, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, UK, USA and Australia.
