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From my accountant:
"If you invest in another company, your company is then seen as an investment company and the tax rules are different for a company that is classed as an Investment Company. There are certain things that have to be done differently, the main one being that an investment company cannot be charged corporation tax at the small company tax rate of 20% and would need to pay the higher rate of 24% going forward.
You are better off tax wise taking the payment as a dividend from your business and investing personally in the other company."What he said :D
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VB, have you considered running this as a charity?
What you're working on could help out humanity, charitable aims etc.
SME investors are more likely to donate, and in larger chunks, because of the tax break
It would discourage gordon gekko types who may try a shareholders takeover
If it's a success you still get to make a very decent living indeed
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A very small point relating to the demo. The second page (polo) refers to a filter to take the user to 'events'. I don't see the filter on the page.
Good luck with this. I'm very interested in supporting, particularly with the tax advantages mentioned above.
The right hand side, the sidebar.
That's only ever going to show things that are contextually related to the stuff on the page.
Hence, the "online now" numbers are for the content you're looking at... on the home page it's on the site, in a microcosm it's within the microcosm, within a conversation it's the number of people looking at the item.
Filters and action items also exist in the context area, at the top.
To answer your question, on this page http://demo.microcosm.app/exports/3_microcosm_polo_events.png the second grey block down in the context area is supposed to be a dropdown filter for types of content in the microcosm.
And as all items now on display are events, a load of event specific filters have appeared to allow you to find events based on proximity and interest levels.
Being a mockup the page elements (dropdowns, buttons, checkboxes) don't look right. Additionally some parts are there just to illustrate concept and don't reflect any final implementation.
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Just to clarify my comment. The second page http://demo.microcosm.app/exports/2_microcosm_polo.png is the one I'm refering to and in your "navigation to next mockup" box relating to this page is the comment "As a user, we used the filter on the right and chose "Events"."
The Events link in the sidebar does not appear on that mockup page but in the next one.I'm not nitpicking BTW, more like proof reading.
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On the right where it says "All Microcosms"... that grey box is a drop-down that filters the stuff in the microcosm.
It's wrong that it says "All Microcosms", that's definitely a typo/mistake. In earlier drafts we were going with "Show me [Everything]" where the [Everything] was a dropdown and you'd pick [Events].
We do have a few HTML based mockups, perhaps this one demonstrates it better as it's more tactile: http://demo.microcosm.app/microcosm.shtml
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Not really a technical question - but what happens if somebody decides they want to set up a microcosm that, say, is focused on "destroy all the gays" or "burn the jews!" or "lolicon fanclub lolz" or whatever? Wouldn't that open you up to liability if the content is hosted on your servers?
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Not really a technical question - but what happens if somebody decides they want to set up a microcosm that, say, is focused on "destroy all the gays" or "burn the jews!" or "lolicon fanclub lolz" or whatever? Wouldn't that open you up to liability if the content is hosted on your servers?
That's just a question in general for all web sites that have user generated content.
The EU eCommerce directive very clearly states that the service offered would be considered a mere conduit and afford protections to the provider of the service. That is covered here: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32000L0031:En:HTML in point 43.
But let's be clear... whilst I will hide behind 'mere conduit' and have no awareness of the vast majority of content. If content exists on the system for which I have been made aware, and where that content is very clearly in breach of other laws, then of course I would have to remove such content.
The entire operation will be Europe based, and avoid US based entities. This grants full data protection rights to you and keeps me in a single legal domain.
As such, you could reasonably expect in your argument that "destroy all the gays" would be removed based on UK hate laws and inequality laws. And "burn the jews" would definitely breach French and German laws on anti-semitism as well as UK laws on hate.
The lolicon fanclub is fine from a legal perspective, but I suspect very few people would use it and thus that within the wider system it would be largely invisible. That is... if the list of microcosms were sorted by activity and a superfluous microcosm had none, it would be bottom of the list.
I think it's true that a natural order for the forums will emerge through usage.
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Interesting - if I undertstand correctly, SEIS tax relief is 50% of the amount invested no matter what your tax bracket (so long as you payed more than the amount you are seeking to claim back)
Not only that - but there is then no capital gains associated with the shares!!??
What I am trying to work out is how one goes about claiming this if you are just PAYE - do you just let your employer know and they change your tax code?
Most of the info online relates to self-assessment, which a large number of potential investors are likely to not do, as they will most likely be on a regular payroll and get tax deducted through PAYE....
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One of the things for potential investors to note is that participation is based on your understanding of risk and making a self-certification that you are able to afford to lose the investment without deciding to sue seedrs.com or me for your investment decision.
In effect the government make you agree to say that you are a high earner and that you know the risks involved and are seasoned when it comes to investing. When you sign up to seedrs to be able to invest, you will be agreeing to such a statement or asked to make such a declaration.
Generally speaking, angel investment is in the high risk and potentially high return category. Wise investors say that this should only be 5% of your investment strategy... that you put most money in secure investments, and gamble with a small amount.
This should all be common sense stuff... there is no guarantee that I can build a multi-million pound business in a couple of years, and as I'm fond of saying the default state for most tech startups is death. As the founder and CEO it's my job to not only give birth to this thing such that it grows into something strong, but I constantly have to subject the company to defibrillation just to keep it alive and kicking.
The risks are real... you may believe in the idea, this forum, me... but nothing can be guaranteed even with all the belief in the world.
Invest only what you could accept losing.
Thankfully SEIS makes this far more palatable than it is. But then, it's up to you to go figure that out too.
Of course the advantage of a forum, is that I'm pretty sure once one of you figure it out you'll share it with the other investors.
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On the right where it says "All Microcosms"... that grey box is a drop-down that filters the stuff in the microcosm.
It's wrong that it says "All Microcosms", that's definitely a typo/mistake. In earlier drafts we were going with "Show me [Everything]" where the [Everything] was a dropdown and you'd pick [Events].
We do have a few HTML based mockups, perhaps this one demonstrates it better as it's more tactile: http://demo.microcosm.app/microcosm.shtml
Got it now, thanks.
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Define important.
It depends on perspective.
Some would regard the idea as important, others the investment. Others still would consider the posts about taxation risks for companies and SEIS as important.
It's pretty hard to condense the whole thread but if there are universally agreed key points that should be in post #1 then I'll put them there.
Not wanting to sound like a broken record, this is basically a feature of Microcosm that you want. The way to create a first post that is a community edited wiki post. Such that it could be collaboratively worked on and refined.
It was the "What to do in the case of an accident" thread that made me realise that community collaborated posts were important.
If this was a year or two in the future, I would cheekily say you could edit it yourself.
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More dull SEIS advice: http://seedrs.com/seis and http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/seedeis/invest.htm
Finally got a quiet moment to look through these. My tax bill likes this a lot!
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Velocio - Should I assume that you have some way of linking votes/pledges back to people or do you need us to state what we have done in the thread?
Apologies if this has been covered up thread..I, and I only, have a way to know who voted for what.
It's basically the bit of the database that prevents you from voting twice. It has to keep track of what you voted for.
So yes... I know, and I will keep everyone who voted in the loop.
With regards to being kept in the loop...
We've finished creating a crowd-funding site for the donation element, which includes the dodgy video I had to create for KickStarter... and as I am petrified of video cameras we're probably just going to reuse that video.
Seedrs is setup and looking good. We've yet to finish the validation to seedrs. This is legal stuff like proof of who we are, proof of where we live, proof of the company existing and age, shareholder proof, proof of our claims in the proposition, etc.
TAKEN MONEY/INVESTMENT WILL WAIT UNTIL TUESDAY.
I started the thread 2 days ago and the interest has been overwhelming.
But there are things that I cannot do on a whim and for shits and giggles. So I need to speak to a lawyer on Monday (I'm actually speaking to 2) to make sure that everything paperwork-wise is in order for the equity offer and to ensure that I've structured things correctly with regards to how do this such that it doesn't prevent VC funding of a Series A at some point way into the future.
Basically I have i's to dot, and t's to cross and then I can launch.
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Crowdfunding the creation of the next version of LFGSS
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@Velocio
From my accountant:
"If you invest in another company, your company is then seen as an investment company and the tax rules are different for a company that is classed as an Investment Company. There are certain things that have to be done differently, the main one being that an investment company cannot be charged corporation tax at the small company tax rate of 20% and would need to pay the higher rate of 24% going forward.
You are better off tax wise taking the payment as a dividend from your business and investing personally in the other company."