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(F/L)OSS, Boring Blogs, and Gifts & Donations

Riven Skaye / September 2025

Taking Donations for Anything

This is something everyone will at some point think about if they do any kind of hobby work that might benefit random strangers on the internet. Whether you’re devloping the next Python, or writing some niche use case camera capture thing that just wastes a lot of memory keeping decoded frames in there. The rules around GST/VAT, income tax, and whether it even is income are a mess everywhere and nobody seems to be able to tell you how it works in your country, or at what point donations become “payment for services” or “income” or “profit” and that sucks. So I decided to look into it because why not? If people want to give me money, I would absolutely welcome that. For everyone else, I want them to have a good laugh about getting one’s hopes up. Or just make them smile that apparently it’s possible even if it’s improbable. I just wanna see if I can and not if I’ll make any money off of it. And lowkey, I want to know at what point I would have to charge and pay tax over anything I would get.

Turns out that so long as you make it abundantly clear that you’re using the money in whatever way you like, with nothing being done in return and no guarantees on it being spent on projects or hosting, it’s considered a gift. If you do actually use the money you get to afford whatever hobbies the donation link is on, that is also fine. Just don’t tell the people that give you money what you’re using it for. Literally.

Preface: this is not legal advice, and specific to one country

I am not a lawyer I am also not a tax consultant or otherwise certified for doing money. This is stuff I looked up in my free time. Lunch breaks here, bus rides there, evenings on the couch. This is not legal advice, do your own research, the information here is only applicable if you are in The Netherlands or are donating to someone in The Netherlands. The relevant tax information page for the current year is also only available in Dutch. I did search the tax agency website in its English form, but alas. Use a translator extension if you want to read the information here and aren’t able to decipher the Dutch language.

First Act: Taxation on Gifts

Gifts in The Netherlands are exempt from tax below a certain amount. This amount is defined per gifter, per year and is different for your parents. The amount in question is € 2690 for anyone that isn’t your mom and dad combined. Which brings us to the next point: combining gift amounts!

• One person gifting more than once a year
• Registered partners gifting separately (there’s more than just marriage that applies here)
• People gifting both the receiver and their registered partner
• Both your parents’ gifts even if they’re divorced

This tells us two things. First, you can’t dodge tax rules by splitting the gifting or receiving over two people. If I were to be married, and both of us get gifted € 100 by the one reading this, the tax agency says we got 200 but it only has to be reported once. If you give me the 100 and your spouse gives my spouse 100, it’s still the same. Because it is apparently very easy to determine who the spouse of a gifter is. Which makes sense if you don’t consider the internet. Heh. Secondly, you could technically make a pretty good, tax-free living off just gifts. You just have to make it abundantly clear to everyone involved there is no service, product, or anything else being done in exchange for the gift. That’s good to know!

But wait, there’s more! If you are Dutch, and you moved out of the Netherlands over 10 years ago, there is no ceiling. You could gift Dutch people € 9000 and it wouldn’t even have to be reported! Same thing goes for anyone who isn’t Dutch and hasn’t lived in The Netherlands for at least one whole year. If you did live here for a while in the past year, it’s subject to the same cap as Dutch gifters. If you have never lived in The Netherlands, and you aren’t Dutch, then all amounts are exempt.
Gifts may raise eyebrows, but they are exempt. I just have to make sure to report them all.

Second Act: Defining a Gift

This is the part that gets a lot more tricky. When is something a gift, and when is it income? For the purposes of taxation, a gift is anything given with no expectations of getting anything in return. So yes, your mom asking for a peck on the cheeck for a gift is taxable sex work. That is their exact definition of a gift. This also means that gifts aren’t limited to just money. If you buy me a coffee in real life, I’m supposed to add the value of that coffee on top of any digital coffees you buy me through Ko-Fi.

Sorry for this section being so anticlimactic. I give out free hugs IRL, with no expectations in return. I estimate the value of a hug to be € 0.00 so it should be fine if you want one as consolation.

Third Act: Collecting Money Using This Information

Taking all this information makes it a lot easier to piece together the things one would need to do to get money for doing their hobby. Basically the important bits are as follows:

• Don’t link gifts to specific projects
• Don’t present gift-giving opportunities as supporting a project
• Make no guarantees about what the money will be spent on
  • Relevant: what if donations exceed the cost for a project?
  • What if there is no cost?
• Make it clear donations are gifts before people pay
• Document this information in a way you can provide the tax agency if need be

Assuming you do all this, you could then set up a donation/gifting service in whatever way works for you. in my case, the choice fell on Ko-Fi, the “buy me a coffee” button. This choice is simple: gifts are supposed to be one-time things. Recurring gifts and any form of automated money transfers are considered income or payment for services, so I needed a platform that let me disable memberships and recurring payments. I also kinda did want to make sure that there wasn’t going to be some exec buying lunch off whatever money people send through their platform. And guess what: you can turn off the 5% cut for Ko-Fi, at the cost of Shop and Membership features that would only result in being taxed anyway. If it’s simply about people giving purely for appreciation, this is a perfect match. Factor in the fact they let you customize the message (e.g. “Send me a gift!”) and it puts them exactly where you need them. A service to allow other to send you gifts without much hassle.

Fourth Act: The Grand Finale ~ A Gift

Given all of this information, I would really like for people that want to show their appreciation to send a gift to the creators they love instead of signing up for memberships. I feel committed to this goal, because I don’t think that giving the world access to free code and information and whatnot should be taxed. That feels like punishing creators for gifting their time and work to the world. Buy a dev a coffee, nobody bats an eye. Buy them a coffee every day, and still nobody cares. But give them money to help support a hobby that bleeds them dry, and suddenly it’s considered payment for software or services. Hogwash!

This blog is my gift to the world. Nobody is asking for it, and most people won’t actually like it. But they do like the idea that it’s there for those who do. We need more little acts of kindness like that. It makes the world a better place, spread the love and all that. And if someone feels like they can’t give a gift in the form of something useful or entertaining, but they feel like they can give money to people who can then further spread their own gifts, then that’s a beautiful thing. And I feel like taking money away from that is evil. And if giving to support a project is being unfairly treated, then give to support the person. Odds are that those gifts will end up directly or indirectly benefitting the project anyway. Not because the recipient feels obligated, but because they care enough to spend time and money on it.

If you really like me, and you would like to send me some money so I can buy coffee or whatever, hit the button below and send me a gift. I can’t promise you it’ll be used for anything you would like to support, but I usually spend gifted money responsibly. Like long-lived investments such as washing machines and new bits and pieces for my PC that’ll run for years.

Closing words

Again, this is not legal or financial advice. If anyone is more knowledgeable, I’d gladly hear from them and correct whatever needs correcting. This is also not tax fraud or evasion; it’s up to the people taking gifts to make sure they are very clear and open about the fact that gifts may not be allocated toward whatever people would like them to be allocated to. I also might set up a lightweight app to handle webhooks. That would allow me to both streamline how and when this blog gets built, and also to let me provide more transparency about gifts I receive, how it’s spent, and how far off I would be on any costs related to pet projects that I’m currently paying for out of pocket. I really like the idea of spending gift money doing the things that make people want to send it in the first place. A tiny circle of life finances!