I am also not a lawyer or an accountant.
I agree that paying salaries to employees that run a non-profit is no
problem. If one of those employee's is the owner (and probably also either
the President or CEO), there is nothing wrong.
The only potential problem is if the salary is unreasonable. The basis for
choosing a salary is the same as in a for profit business. It is based on
what the employee can do for the company--what their labor is worth. If the
salary is greater than or equal to the surplus, then the whole surplus should
go to the salary. If the salary is less than the surplus and the salary is
then increased to absorb the surplus, that could be a problem (again, if the
previous salary has already been determined and if the surplus is more than a
reasonable raise).
For example let us say that a 1,000,000 salary is appropriate: last year you
pay yourself 50,000 and the surplus is then 0. Next year you pay yourself
100,000 and the surplus is then 0. Next year you pay yourself 500,000 and the
surplus is again 0. And so on. When the surplus is 1,000,001 then the
salary is 1,000,000 and the surplus is 1. If next year the surplus is
3,000,000, then after the 1,000,000 salary is deducted as an expense, the
surplus is 2,000,000
In other words, the employee (whether owner or not) should get an appropriate
salary or be willing to work for less. I could see the argument that the
owner should not be allowed to make that decision as he/she is biased.
However, in the USA we have the IRS and you do not want to mess with them!
They are incredibly powerful. They can throw you in jail if you evade income
taxes. This means the owner's income is known and others would sue the owner
for fraud if he/she could not justify the salary they are taking.
More often than not, an owner/founder of a non-profit is doing the work
because they love the cause and will tend to pay themselves less than they
deserve (perhaps a reason why somebody other than the owner should determine
his/her salary!)
In this case, clearly Ruben was taking a big pay cut to work on Trisquel.
$500/month if Ruben spends 2 hours per day on the project then he is paying
himself less than $10/hour. A good programmer should make at least 5-10
times that much. Even if he took the whole 8,000 it would be much less than
he should get paid. If he was doing it for the money he would need to get
paid much much more.
So, Thank you Ruben!!
