---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <pgs2cl$bei$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2018 00:46:13 +0000 (UTC) From: wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Re: Apple Plans to Stream Children's Shows From Sesame Workshop In article <pgoiks$b68$1@reader1.panix.com>, danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com> wrote: >Dare I ask the question that ... with all these business deals, >just why is Sesame Workshop still holding onto tax exempt status? It's fairly easy to be a not-for-profit corporation: it's a matter of structure, not line of business. There are many non-profits which are quite enormous businesses (the American Red Cross and many health insurers, for example). All non-profits must file an annual tax return on IRS form 990, but providing they meet the structural requirements, they are exempt from taxation. This category includes far more than just charities: there are labor unions, chambers of commerce, certain kinds of mutual insurance companies, political parties, political action committees, and so on. (The principal structural requirement is not having owners or beneficiaries who are entitled to a share in the assets of the corporation should it be dissolved.) It's only somewhat more difficult to be a charity, which is what allows *donors* to claim a tax deduction. A charity has to have a specific charitable purpose, but those can include providing health care services, supporting the development of free software, or operating nationwide religious radio networks. Charities are somewhat limited in how much they can directly earn from "unrelated business activities", so a large charity -- like a university, for example -- may place some of its operations in a taxable subsidiary, and then receive the profits as dividends after paying tax; this is treated as an investment. -GAWollman (IANAL,TINLA) -- Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can, wollman@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together." my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015) ------------------------------ Message-ID: <20180626200844.GA30420@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2018 16:08:44 -0400 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> Subject: Chinese Robocalls Bombarding The U.S. Are Part Of An International Phone Scam By Stephen Nessen If you live in a part of the country that has a large Chinese immigrant population, you may have recently received a robocall in Mandarin - or even several of them. The calls seem to be blanketing certain phone exchanges without regard to the national origin of the recipients. Presumably, this is how the New York Police Department ended up on the call list. NYPD Officer Donald McCaffrey, who works in the Queens grand larceny division, is investigating the calls in New York City. He has also been receiving them on a daily basis. https://www.npr.org/2018/05/10/609117134/chinese-robocalls-bombarding-the-u-s-are-part-of-an-international-phone-scam -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly) ------------------------------ Message-ID: <D1A7BDF5-D10D-4943-AA92-8F5E82F56ED7@roscom.com> Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2018 23:13:09 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> Subject: Frank Heart, Who Linked Computers Before the Internet, Dies at 89 Frank Heart, the engineer who oversaw development of the first routing computer for the Arpanet, the precursor to the internet, died on Sunday at a retirement community in Lexington, Mass. He was 89. Mr. Heart's team built the gateway device for the Arpanet, the pre- cursor to the internet. Data networking was so new then, they made it up as they went. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/technology/frank-heart-who-linked-computers-before-the-internet-dies-at-89.html ------------------------------ ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Wed, 27 Jun 2018