DiscussMormonism.com

Peggy Stack article in SL Trib yesterday found here.

From the article.

For members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, tithing — donating 10% of one’s income to the faith — “is more of a sense of commitment than it is the church needing the money,” Roger Clarke, head of Ensign Peak Advisors, which manages the denomination’s investing holdings, told The Wall Street Journal.
“So they never wanted to be in a position where people felt like, you know, they shouldn’t make a contribution,” Clarke said.

Okay that makes perfect sense. They are hiding all this money just for the benefit of the members. They are just expanding what information they are hiding to help members from troubling history to include troubling financial information. Well, at least they are consistent.

Neither Clarke nor other officials would provide The Journal with details on the size of the church’s annual budget or how much money goes to Ensign Peak. But, the paper reported, they “gave estimates for its main areas of expenditure that, collectively, total about $5 billion.”

In recent years, the church’s reserve fund has grown by about 7% annually, Clarke told The Journal, mainly from returns on existing investments, not member donations.

So the church could literally stop collecting money from members, pay the $5 billion in operating costs, and still make $2 Billion a year in profit on the reserves they have now. If ever there was a clear example of how the God of Mormonism has become obedience for the sake of obedience, this is it. "We don't need the money. God doesn't need the money but members need to show their faith by paying tithing anyways"

Clarke and former Ensign employees said the firm created a system of more than a dozen shell companies to make its stock investments harder to track. That strategy, Clarke said, was designed to prevent members from parroting what Ensign was doing and to, as the paper stated, “protect them from mismanaging their own funds with insufficient information.”

Wait. What? How could members parrot a fund no one knew existed? This does not pass the smell test.

Church officials described the fund as a “rainy-day account” and to help fund operations in poorer parts of the world — such as Africa, where the faith is booming — where member donations can’t keep up.

I know right? Because member's donations are having a great impact in Africa right now. /Boggle. How much worse does it have to get in Africa to actually qualify as a rainy day?

Church officials said the global faith, as a whole, gives about $1 billion a year to “humanitarian causes and charities.”

Without any accounting of this claim it is just a bald unsupported assertion. I would guess much of that "charity" is just proselytizing missionary work. Not actually feeding the poor or healing the sick.

The church’s governing First Presidency — made up of church President Russell M. Nelson and his counselors, Dallin H. Oaks and Henry B. Eyring — rejected any allegation of fraudulent behavior, insisting in a news release that the faith “complies with all applicable law governing our donations, investments, taxes and reserves.”

Yeah, no. Mike Quinn has already shown that where they have to disclose their finances they don't pay taxes on profits until forced by the local government to do so, taking advantage of lax enforcement in underdeveloped countries to make more $$$$$. God must be so proud.

During Q&A sessions at the end, employees sometimes asked what the money might be used for, according to one of the former employees, who attended.Church leaders responded by saying they wanted to know that, too, according to this person.
“It was so amorphous,” the former employee said. “It was always, ‘When we have direction from the prophet.’ Everyone was waiting, as it were, for direction from God.” The prophet is the president of the church.

What is it a prophet does again? Turns out he is good at determining the age of missionaries and the length of church meetings but has no clue as to what to do with 100B.

It's clear that the church is misleading the members by how they organized their funds. One wonders how much of the church wealth is hiding in offshore/tax haven accounts.

“So they never wanted to be in a position where people felt like, you know, they shouldn’t make a contribution,” Clarke said.

Are you damned serious Roger?

Clarke and former Ensign employees said the firm created a system of more than a dozen shell companies to make its stock investments harder to track. That strategy, Clarke said, was designed to prevent members from parroting what Ensign was doing and to, as the paper stated, “protect them from mismanaging their own funds with insufficient information.”

No, it was done to obfuscate. They have absolutely no respect for the members who sacrifice in order to contribute to the church tithing hedge fund. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. They ought to be imprisoned in their modest homes DCP raved about recently.

It's interesting how over at Sic et Non, the Proprietor is libertarian to the point of busting out "tax man" lyrics to accompany his posts exposing his personal strategies to pay less taxes. I don't think anyone purposefully avoids tax-saving investments just to make sure one is paying their fair share, but even if you don't think you're getting the best value for your tax money spent, it's not like you and your family aren't getting anything out of the taxes you pay. But the great libertarian spirit demands we give to Uncle Sam with a grudge and a middle finger, and anyone who suggests raising taxes is an enemy to freedom. But then, when it comes to tithing, anyone who condemns the Church for getting rich off of it and hording sums unknown to any but the largest corporations in the world, then that person is a terrible person and an enemy to freedom and disrespectful to the great institution of religion. He can't imagine paying a dollar in taxes unless a gun is at his head, but he'll give that same dollar to be hoarded to the Church with a twinkle in his eye and a big smile. Nothing could be better than that. Maybe it's because the government can only threaten you with prison for non-payment, but the Church threatens with eternal damnation? Be the threat as it may be, it seems like the Proprietor is only happy to have the threats if they are from the Church, and the greater the threat, the greater the desire to willingly pay. While that sounds weird, it makes sense if you consider the threat is also against other people, and that's what brings the satisfaction.

Anyway, the absolute contradiction between the grudging paying of taxes of the apologists while they trip over themselves to pay more tithing is proof that they've been indoctrinated by a cult.

Conservatives claim that they get ripped off by the government when they pay their taxes. To hear them tell it, the government is not to be trusted with anyone's money. Conservative LDS people in particular are known for their legacy of tax avoidance. Tax protestors are especially abundant in the LDS world.

That's what makes the eagerness to pay tithing so baffling. I mean, I can see where my tax dollars go, more or less, in the fact that we have the world's largest military and we do an excellent job subsidizing already thriving energy businesses. When we kill children in the Middle East with drones, we see our tax dollars at work. When we see any one of the many hundreds of thousands of federal employees working hard to frisk us at airports, record our phone conversations, or work to keep up our shrinking system of national parks, there is our tax dollar at work.

With tithing, however, things are a lot murkier. Sure, there are the buildings all over the place, and there are CES people to pay, but the slight evidence of Church spending, not to mention the Church's lack of transparency, makes it quite mysterious where all of this money is being utilized. Game reserves for GAs? Real estate schemes in Florida? Now we see billions in tithing thrown into EPA.

But heaven forfend that anyone should express misgivings about the Church gathering tithing and offerings only to turn around and invest this money in EPA, or a shopping mall, or thousands of acres of land in Florida. But where will the Church be for these members when they retire, or need healthcare? Don't get me wrong. I know there is a limited helping hand extended by the Church, but it pales in comparison to what the federal government provides, and these days the Church wants you to go to the government for your assistance first.

And now we find that the Church will only pay its taxes when the government puts pressure on it to do so.

I have to say, what the hell is going on there in SLC, and why would anyone want to give them their money? So it can be dumped into a massive investment fund? Buy real estate? Bail out a church business? Not be used to pay the federal government, which actually does productive things with tax dollars, what is owed?

All of this leaves a real bad taste in my mouth.

Church officials said the global faith, as a whole, gives about $1 billion a year to “humanitarian causes and charities.”

Notice the hidden meaning .... “the global faith, as a whole, gives about $1 billion a year ....”

This doesn’t mean the Church itself is donating to charitable causes exclusively. This means ALL the membership’s contributions outside of tithing world-wide through Church-related activities. There is NO WAY the Church gives a billion dollars a year to charities. It took over 30 years for them to give $1.2 billion to charitable causes - BY THEIR OWN ADMISSION.

Deceitful.

I can’t wrap my mind around what it must feel like for some of the folks who realized they spent their entire lives sacrificing for the Ensign fund. Honestly, my heart breaks for those who are trying to reconcile the facts with the propaganda right now.

- Doc

My favorite quote from Patrick Mason, head of Mormon studies at Utah State University. The reveal

will undoubtedly trouble many church members and lead them to wonder whether their charitable giving is best directed toward an institution that reportedly has a stockpile twice as large as Harvard’s endowment.

Looks like Mason isn't prepared to paint lipstick on this gigantic pig.

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:I can’t wrap my mind around what it must feel like for some of the folks who realized they spent their entire lives sacrificing for the Ensign fund. Honestly, my heart breaks for those who are trying to reconcile the facts with the propaganda right now.

- Doc

A lot of my family and friends are heading into retirement and many have not put aside enough in superannuation. I know some are hurting and it HAS to cross their minds how much they have poured into the corporation's coffers. This $100B will be eating away at them for years to come. A relative in a stake presidency admitted to me he was not comfortable about it. In the past he has defended the church on every issue dealt with by FairMormon. Not this one.

I’m going to guess here that the new $1b per year number counts internal welfare.

Rough math:
- 25k wards
- 5 families per ward receiving $1k per month in assistance

Works out to $60k per ward per year, $1.5 b for the whole church.

Which is plus or minus a billion when the broad strokes are dialed in.

Dr Moore wrote:I’m going to guess here that the new $1b per year number counts internal welfare.

Rough math:
- 25k wards
- 5 families per ward receiving $1k per month in assistance

Works out to $60k per ward per year, $1.5 b for the whole church.

Which is plus or minus a billion when the broad strokes are dialed in.

If so they are being pretty deceitful, since contextually the talk is about tithing income.