New Project Shows Church Finance Corruption

[Moksha]

Just watched the 60 Minutes Australia piece. My take is that corporations should be allowed to aggressively look for tax deductions within the law.

If Wall Street is incentivized to seek out the latest dodge and loopholes, why not the Corporation of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Those Australian churches need to gain some business savvy and let go of those so-called "ethics" that impede maximal financial gain.

[Dr Exiled]

Just watched the 60 Minutes Australia piece. My take is that corporations should be allowed to aggressively look for tax deductions within the law.

If Wall Street is incentivized to seek out the latest dodge and loopholes, why not the Corporation of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Those Australian churches need to gain some business savvy and let go of those so-called "ethics" that impede maximal financial gain.

I think the difference is that cojcolds is supposedly a church and not a Wall Street corporate creature. However, one wonders with the $ 1 Trillion in investments goal that I suspect it has. Gotta finance the kolob space program for the end times ....

[IHAQ]

Jana gives a good synopsis of what the reporters are saying the Church has done in Australia:

The reporters are claiming the church created what The Age referred to as “a shell company” in order to exploit a loophole in Australian law. Australia does not give any kind of tax exemption for donations to churches or houses of worship. But it does give a tax exemption for donations to “charity,” things like homeless shelters and schools and hospitals.
The reports are stating that the LDS Church created a “charitable trust fund” and directed Australian Saints to send their tithing and other donations to that trust fund rather than to the church itself. They could then claim the tax exemption for contributing to a charity.
But if I am understanding it correctly, Australian law then requires the registered charities to distribute much of that money within Australia and to have that distribution overseen locally, with all decisions made by Australians who run the charity from within the country.
Instead, what appears to have happened is that Australians’ tithing dollars got centralized in Salt Lake City under the larger umbrella of the denomination’s charitable arm, which then disbursed the funds as it wished to.

https://religionnews.com/2022/10/31/lds ... australia/

Jana's take on it...

This kind of financial practice looks terrible for the church. It feels covert and deceptive. Creating a “charity” that appears to be in name only is unfair to other religions in Australia that have played by the rules. It’s unfair to the Australian government, which has been shortchanged millions in taxes. And it’s unfair to those tithe-paying Latter-day Saints Down Under who had a right to assume their tithing was going where it was supposed to.

One of the comments on the article:

Similar stuff going on here in the UK where the church also has to publish its accounts. They spent 10 years hoarding the donations to Perpetual Education and Humanitarian Aid funds in a bank account and have just transferred the whole lot to central funds in Salt Lake. It will never be spent on what the donors were told it would be and the church has now given up any pretense of being accountable for using the money for those specific purposes that used to be on the tithing slip. Blatant charity fraud.

The Church now has a sole purpose of maximising cash and syphoning it off into the now not-so-secret fund, to be hoarded. The rest of it, Church services, temples, LDS Charities, Helping Hands etc etc etc is periphery. A smoke screen to avoid people seeing what is really going on. Distractions they can point the members to if they start getting fidgety about where their money is going.

[BeNotDeceived]

Jesus:

'Sell off all of your excess, help the poor and come follow me'.
'It is easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle than to enter the kingdom of heaven".

LDS 'church': 'That Jesus... such a tease, a million laughs'.