I don't think allowing donations is such a bad thing. Sometimes you might get 20 euro from a nice person. I wouldn't count on it but it's nice when you do. I wouldn't expect to get much, ever. It's just an option for the grateful people to say thanks. I doubt it would ever get over 100 euro.
If you don't charge to play, download, use, or otherwise access the game then it's a 0-cost software. If you accept donations purely to allow grateful people to give you money in connection with making games then it's a donation because you don't charge to play.
Name-your-price is the same thing as saying donations encouraged but not required. Anything you receive purely as a donation is coverd by gift tax laws (if your country has them, not all have them). There's nothing gray about it. If you charge then it's a service and that's considered income. There's nothing between those two options that's gray.
You have to report donations income everywhere in the world. I don't know any country where you can take money without reporting it. You don't always have to pay tax on it under the right conditions, that's what I'm trying to say.
If you receive unemployment that's different. Even in America, if you receive unemployment and you get donation money they consider it like income if it's above a certain amount. I don't know what the numbers are for every country but that's not the same situation as working and receiving a steady income while receiving donations. If you receive unemployment they consider everything income outside of what they give you. If you receive donations and you have a regular job with steady income, even if you're self-employed, you can still take it and declare it without paying tax if it's under the right conditions.
I'm not sure what part of Germany you live in but I live in Germany too. Here in the Eifel region (around Trier, next to Luxembourg) the finance office told me it's legal to receive up to 20000 EUR as a donation without paying tax for an individual. I found a document that says this, here is the link (current as of 2009):
If you make a game and you give it away for free then you are not charging. If you allow people to give you money as a gift in response to providing a free product or service it is a gift, not income. In the table on page 3 of the link I gave above it would fall under Tax Bracket III. There's nothing gray about it unless you have some local tax laws that prohibit donations.
In other European countries like Austria (Österreich) there is not gift or inheritance law so all money received is considered income. It depends on the country.
In the USA a donation is not income, it is a gift as long as it's not required. There is no limit if each donation is less than 12000 USD. Every year you have to declare your income so I would imagine there is some annual limit but I don't know. I do know that after 600 USD it's usually considered income but with donations it's different because it's a gift. In the USA it would fall under gift tax law after some point.
I've been searching trying to find exactly what tax laws say for donations. Everything I said above (minus the wrong schedule to claim income) is true for normal income earned through charging a premium for a game. If it's strictly free and donations are encouraged then it falls under gift tax (meaning $12,000 donation limit before it's considered income). Sorry for the misinformation at first!
The first $600 is considered tax free, after that either you generate a 1099-MISC if someone doesn't for you or you need to add it to your Schedule A as a form of income. If the donations make up more than $2,000 you need to either declare it as self-employment income or register a business license and make yourself a W-2.
That was a project that collected all the sprites from this site into one place and made them available in consistent format. They're all made by different people, many were part of the Liberated Pixel Cup contest last year. They're all free to use, you can see this thread for more info about the first link:
That's where that project started from. As far as license I think most of it is considered dual license under CC-BY-SA 3.0 and GPL 3.0 because of the LPC contest.
I don't think allowing donations is such a bad thing. Sometimes you might get 20 euro from a nice person. I wouldn't count on it but it's nice when you do. I wouldn't expect to get much, ever. It's just an option for the grateful people to say thanks. I doubt it would ever get over 100 euro.
If you don't charge to play, download, use, or otherwise access the game then it's a 0-cost software. If you accept donations purely to allow grateful people to give you money in connection with making games then it's a donation because you don't charge to play.
Name-your-price is the same thing as saying donations encouraged but not required. Anything you receive purely as a donation is coverd by gift tax laws (if your country has them, not all have them). There's nothing gray about it. If you charge then it's a service and that's considered income. There's nothing between those two options that's gray.
You have to report donations income everywhere in the world. I don't know any country where you can take money without reporting it. You don't always have to pay tax on it under the right conditions, that's what I'm trying to say.
If you receive unemployment that's different. Even in America, if you receive unemployment and you get donation money they consider it like income if it's above a certain amount. I don't know what the numbers are for every country but that's not the same situation as working and receiving a steady income while receiving donations. If you receive unemployment they consider everything income outside of what they give you. If you receive donations and you have a regular job with steady income, even if you're self-employed, you can still take it and declare it without paying tax if it's under the right conditions.
I'm not sure what part of Germany you live in but I live in Germany too. Here in the Eifel region (around Trier, next to Luxembourg) the finance office told me it's legal to receive up to 20000 EUR as a donation without paying tax for an individual. I found a document that says this, here is the link (current as of 2009):
http://www.steuerlehre-freiburg.de/fileadmin/repository/lehrstuhl/intlta...
If you make a game and you give it away for free then you are not charging. If you allow people to give you money as a gift in response to providing a free product or service it is a gift, not income. In the table on page 3 of the link I gave above it would fall under Tax Bracket III. There's nothing gray about it unless you have some local tax laws that prohibit donations.
In other European countries like Austria (Österreich) there is not gift or inheritance law so all money received is considered income. It depends on the country.
In the USA a donation is not income, it is a gift as long as it's not required. There is no limit if each donation is less than 12000 USD. Every year you have to declare your income so I would imagine there is some annual limit but I don't know. I do know that after 600 USD it's usually considered income but with donations it's different because it's a gift. In the USA it would fall under gift tax law after some point.
I understand the stressors of school, I'm taking two senior classes at the moment.
I've been searching trying to find exactly what tax laws say for donations. Everything I said above (minus the wrong schedule to claim income) is true for normal income earned through charging a premium for a game. If it's strictly free and donations are encouraged then it falls under gift tax (meaning $12,000 donation limit before it's considered income). Sorry for the misinformation at first!
The first $600 is considered tax free, after that either you generate a 1099-MISC if someone doesn't for you or you need to add it to your Schedule A as a form of income. If the donations make up more than $2,000 you need to either declare it as self-employment income or register a business license and make yourself a W-2.
I made a thread for anyone interested in helping make LPC sprites work with 0circle0's sprite sheet generator. You can find it here:
http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/lpc-sprite-sheet-generator
I'm still waiting for a moderator to approve the thread so it's not showing under the 2D Art discussion listing yet but the link works.
That was a project that collected all the sprites from this site into one place and made them available in consistent format. They're all made by different people, many were part of the Liberated Pixel Cup contest last year. They're all free to use, you can see this thread for more info about the first link:
http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/universal-lpc-sprite-sheet
That's where that project started from. As far as license I think most of it is considered dual license under CC-BY-SA 3.0 and GPL 3.0 because of the LPC contest.
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