With the way they operate, can the rest of the world be far behind? From the WUWT tips and notes we have this news.
Will and also John from New Zealand say:
Greenpeace in New Zealand have just lost their court appeal to retain their charitable tax status. It seems that legally they’re now viewed as a political lobby group:
http://business.scoop.co.nz/2011/05/09/greenpeace-too-political-to-register-as-charity-nz-court/
Greenpeace too political to register as charity, NZ court rules
By Paul McBeth
May 9 (BusinessDesk) – Environmental lobbyist Greenpeace of New Zealand Inc. is too involved in political causes to register as a charity, the High Court has ruled.
Justice Paul Heath turned down an appeal last Friday that Greenpeace could register with the Charities Commission after the body rejected its 2010 application.
Justice Heath said Greenpeace’s political activities can’t be regarded as “merely ancillary” to its charitable purposes and that the commission was correct in disqualifying it for registration over the potentially illegal activities.
@ur momisugly Jerome: thanks. While probably a bit OT, to answer your point shortly the URL below gives a link to the UK HMRC Inspectors’ manual which deals with this.
Every tax jurisdiction is different and I can only speak for the UK, but I think Kiwi law is probably similar. What is critical is that the donations are truly voluntary and episodic – no legal commitment or guarantee of payment, no consideration for the “donation” (I see you used quotes – I wonder why! ), no regularity (none arrive for ages then 3 come along at once like London buses) – but that is how true voluntary donations (no quotes!) play out. There are several other issues and you need good tax advice, but I have seen HMRC accept this, fully disclosed.
URL: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/bimmanual/BIM41810.htm
Greenpeace have become a dangerous force driven by extreme socialist ideology, similar to the Sierra Club, The WWF and other so-called’environmental’ organisations. I am proud of my country and its judiciary for this wonderful and principled move. There are four-and-a-bit million of us Kiwis on a land mass alightly bigger than the UK and Greenpeace has been a severe irritant to too many of us with their silly scare stories and the mental poison they feed our kids.
Latimer Alder says:
May 10, 2011 at 2:32 am
Everywhere one looks, the warmist castle is beginning to crumble.
You may be right. In the Yahoo news on Jim Hansen helping teens to sue the Federal Government over inaction on Climate Change, the top ranked comments are very telling. http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110510/sc_livescience/nasascientisthelpsteenssuegovernmentoverclimatechange
Not that most comments on Yahoo aren’t a complete waste of time to read, but their new sort by approval rating has managed to get some of the better ones to the top.
Well there ya go. Kiwi’s are good fer somethin’……;-)
Now let’s hope that GreenFleece goes broke.
How do we make this happen in the US?
It is so biased. No wonder they are losing the status.
Irony? That’s where the Rainbow Warrior got hit, you’d perhaps expect New Zealand might be more sympathetic towards them. Maybe the French will be next.
Alan, it was not Lenin who said that, but Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany.
However, all three, Lenin, Goebbels and Watson share the same mind-set.
The fact they cooked up false, non-peer-reviewed material on climate change along with WWF and others that their pals in ipcc simply added to their ARs instance enough, let alone GP’s threats (We know where you live … You be few and we be many..) to prominent sceptics, to shut the door on these goons. I would like to see a post recalling all the green organizations’ sins – it might serve as a resource for the plaintiff in the final SCNZ hearing and for other courts around the world. Or simply as a package to send to politicians.
Sorry for the multiple posts. My posts seemed to disappear and I thought they got lost in the spam filter.
Greenpeace lost its charitable status in Canada in 1999.
Now if they would only look at some churches in the same light.
“Latimer Alder says:
May 10, 2011 at 2:32 am
Even in UK, sanity is beginning to burst out in high places.
Our Cabinet is split about the need to actually implement the previous government’s disastrous Climate Change Act..or just to let it wither away..forgotten, unloved, unwanted and useless. ”
The Climate Change Act must be repealed or amended to reduce those ridiculous targets (preferably to nothing) because there is now a huge number of climate change officers in local councils all spouting the mantra and writing it into every sort of local council policy document, even those that seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with climate change. Councils have partnership agreements with other organisations who have bought into the climate change meme and take the council’s policy and expand on it still further. It is insidious throughout local government and any other organisation it touches, and vice versa. Even if the democratic part of local government is none too keen on the climate change mantra, because the diktat has come down from government, officers have bought into it with complete abandonment. Earth Week was extensively pushed on councils’ websites and through schools.
The Climate Change Act will not just wither and die while there are so many vested interests.
But, good old NZ. Looking forward to my trip there later on this year to see the cousins.
My American Thinker article from last July described how Greenpeace USA circa 2000 was part of the original effort to portray skeptic scientists as corrupted by fossil fuel money, see “Smearing Global Warming Skeptics” http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/07/smearing_global_warming_skepti.html
Imagine how much of this political lobbying is now part of their worldwide efforts.
Hip Hip HURRAH !!!!!!!!!!!
Welcome aboard New Zealand. In 1989 no less a green haven than Canada dealt the Dutch-based environmentalist group a massive blow to its credibility and fundraising efforts by denying it the charitable status it had sought for a decade. Revenue Canada, the tax-collecting arm of the government, refused to recognize the new Greenpeace Environmental Foundation as a charity, saying its activities have “no public benefit” and that lobbying to shut down industries could send people “into poverty.”
Charles says “I once talked with someone who got quite ‘high up’ in the organization and this person described an intensely rigid, doctrinaire and controlling hierarchy. The way they described it made me think of a Medieval Monastic set up!”
A better description is “cult”. It would be best if GP, WWF, etc were declared churches of the Green religion. Then goverments could not fund them and schools could not indoctrinate their beliefs to students.
I thought religions could achieve charitable status.
Greenpeace is a terrorist organization and should be treated like one.
The next thing they need to do in Australia is kinda the opposite:
Declare that nutball PM they’ve got as an environmental charity and revoke her status as a political entity.
Just a thought.
Frankly, I’d love to see an Amendment to our Constitution that banned all Governmentg funding for NGOs. All NGOs. It’s just too damn open to abuse.
I didn’t know GP was a charity! WTF!!
Why are these so called “charities” amassing major amounts of profits anyway?
A reasonable answer would be to say they do not spend their funds on what they campaign for. What are they campaigning for? it’s the money!!
These charities are businesses pushing a political agenda, they bypass our democratic processes and undermining our liberties by abusing the kind nature of people.
Jer0me says:
May 10, 2011 at 2:20 am
I do not think you are correct. I receive regular ‘donations’ from my customers, but I think the tax man would not allow me to consider these as non-taxable! They would be in exactly the same position.
Not entirely true. In a normal transaction, goods or services are received in exchange for the money donated. The ruling says that essentially, Greenpeace is a lobbying firm. Which may be true given their tactics. This means that they are not receiving ‘donations’, but they are receiving lobbying fees. The things they subsequently do are their lobbying services. I can see how this applies to them. Now if Greenpeace put their money where their mouth is and cleaned up toxic messes, tested water flows, and such things, I would say that they are providing valuable charitable services. Hassling whaling boats is not exactly charitable.
Sparks,
Charities do not mass profits. They have unreliable revenue streams. There is nothing wrong with a charity trying to provide a consistent mission by maintaining a fund balance that they can use to stave off a couple of bad years. If non-mission expenses increase, especially administrative expenses, then there may be a problem in the way the charity is run.
As to ‘the kind nature of people’, I would say that that nature is shown best in donations made to charities that actually help people. Still, if GPeace were to do what I said in my previous post and travel a country cleaning up toxic areas, how would they keep the area from becoming toxic again if they were not allowed to lobby?
The Free World=1 , Communism=0
Next round please!