At last week's very successful Berlin meeting, the finances were
thrown of whack by the late discovery that the IETF had to pay 19%
German VAT on the registration fee. At the IAOC session they said
that about half of that is likely to be reclaimed from VAT paid, but
the net amount is still a large number.
The usual IANAL and IANAC should not be joined by IANACPA.
But a CPA at my company said that we couldn't reclaim the VAT, because the
"service" was consumed in Germany. If others hear different from their
accounting departments, I'd love to hear about it.
Ray said the tax guys told him the IETF would get back about half of the
VAT it paid. That's unrelated to what anyone can reclaim.
My understanding is that Germany has reciprocal VAT agreements with a
bunch of countries so if your employer is in one of those countries it may
be able to reclaim, but since the US isn't one of them I haven't looked in
detail.
R's,
John