On 13 May 2017, at 08:51, Evan Leibovitch <evan@telly.org> wrote:

Remember that the issue under debate is not the disposal of excess funds from the gTLD application fees over real costs, but of auction proceeds​ gained well in excess of those fees by applicants willing to pay an even higher premium to get specific strings.

 If I remember correctly, ICANN collected USD $175K per application, and recognized as a hefty price to pay even by ICANN itself.  This could be a threshold that prevented some or many potential applications.

​Perhaps a lower fee for future rounds based on the experience of previous wounds would address this situation, but a retroactive refund would not.

Agree on the first point, we are talking of the auction proceeds. Since this is money that the competitors have willingly invested, there is no correlation with the excess fees, that were a compulsory payment for the application.

However, I disagree on the second point. Once ICANN has calculated the real cost, one of the options is indeed to retroactively refund the difference, assuming that the budget item from where the money comes is the regular gTLD programme, not the auction funds.

Of course, the obstacle might be that the refund will come a few fiscal years after the payment, but this should not be a major problem

Back to the main issue that originated the thread, I believe that we must also take into account perceptions. So, while I agree that self-promotion of the activities that ICANN does for serving the global community could be done with this money without affecting the non-profit status (if done properly), I would hope that this activity will be funded by the regular budget.

Cheers,

Roberto