New Project Shows Church Finance Corruption

[Dr Moore]

Such a shame they kept it secret for so long. Member input along the way would in all likelihood have resulted in greater generosity, more goodwill and trust, and most importantly, changing the world in a measurable way. Instead we have yet another situation in which the brethren made choices out of fear and the outcome is going to be like another gospel topics essay.

Members are bombarded with “show more faith” when it comes to paying tithing and being generous with God. How does it land on those same members who see church leaders exhibiting essentially no faith whatsoever when it comes to money? There is no need to have faith with this level of fortress wealth.

[simon southerton]

I have seen the property in the CA Central Valley. That is a small fraction of what they own. I would be shocked if the Ag assets were worth less than 10 Billion.

Simon, does the Church still own farms and stations in Australia?

I think they sold all or most of them. If I was a farmer growing the same crop as a farm backed by a church worth close to a trillion dollars, I'd be very concerned.

[Cultellus]

I have seen the property in the CA Central Valley. That is a small fraction of what they own. I would be shocked if the Ag assets were worth less than 10 Billion.

Simon, does the Church still own farms and stations in Australia?

I think they sold all or most of them. If I was a farmer growing the same crop as a farm backed by a church worth close to a trillion dollars, I'd be very concerned.

If I recall, the point you are making was a concern shared by other station operators. Though, in fairness, not all the stations or farms were independently (family) owned. Part of the concern was related to tax status and also some concerns about labor.

There was a time in the Central Valley and in Florida when so-called welfare missionaries were used on the farms. I doubt that Australia allowed that kind of competitive advantage to the Deseret investors.

Thanks for the response.

[Gadianton]

Page 9 really gets you with the old "we're not a wealthy people" quote.

[Kishkumen]

Needless to say, I will never give the LDS Church another penny of my money.

[Cultellus]

Needless to say, I will never give the LDS Church another penny of my money.

Nor will they get my time.

[Moksha]

There was a time in the Central Valley and in Florida when so-called welfare missionaries were used on the farms. I doubt that Australia allowed that kind of competitive advantage to the Deseret investors.

Thanks for the response.

Church farms in the US still use missionary labor. I imagine information on the Church's holdings in Australia is guarded.

[Cultellus]

There was a time in the Central Valley and in Florida when so-called welfare missionaries were used on the farms. I doubt that Australia allowed that kind of competitive advantage to the Deseret investors.

Thanks for the response.

Church farms in the US still use missionary labor. I imagine information on the Church's holdings in Australia is guarded.

To put that in context, it would be like having all the drivers of Amazon work for free as volunteers because Jeff Bezos communes with Jehovah.

[dastardly stem]

Needless to say, I will never give the LDS Church another penny of my money.

The Church benefits greatly from the taxes everyone pays....and in return it doesn't pay it's share. In that indirect, difficult to deduce way, we're all giving anther penny to the Church.

I may be trying too hard with this concern, but it feels worth investigating to me.

[Dr Moore]

According to this well researched website, the church has between USD300 and USD400 in commercial and agricultural real estate.
http://www.bidstrup.com/ldsfinances.htm

I've been curiously reading this linked page. Thanks for sharing it, Simon.

The page is dense and rather difficult to parse. On one hand, so much information must have taken a lot of effort to find.

But it's hard to understand how Scott makes the leap to claiming such large numbers in real estate holdings.

Many land holdings are listed, but without a clear summary of what's owned and what's leased. And none of the land holdings are given a dollar value. So despite all of the listed properties, it all seems to boil down to two inputs which are not attributed:

First, this:

Some years ago, the Salt Lake Tribune sent some reporters around to poke through the public records in the County Recorder's offices scattered around the state of Utah, carefully recording land and real property owned by entities known to be church-owned corporations in each county. When the results were tallied up, the total assessed taxable value was $110 billion - about 11% of the assessed taxable property value of the entire state of Utah.

Then, this:

The church's apostles have often said that the church owns more real estate outside of Utah than inside.

With these two statements, Scott jumps to the conclusion that the church must own "$220 billion, absolute minimum" in real estate, not held in Ensign Peak. Not to question Scott's research, but it feels a bit hand wavy at the end of the day, because his huge headline numbers of greater than $220Bn in real estate holdings is ultimately based on two uncited, and candidly, questionable, if not made up, sources.

There's no doubt the church owns a lot of land. But how much is that land worth, really? I find Scott's presentation unconvincing in terms of justifying the claimed asset values.

Another point, missed by most assessments, is that temples and chapels may have cost a certain amount of money, but are in fact worth only slightly less than the market value of the land they sit on, because that's what a buyer will pay for the land, discounting the cost of demolition. The buildings have no value to the market, only to the church.

In the end, I think it makes more sense to be conservative and careful in these analyses. Because over-estimation of church assets and holdings ends up grounding bad feelings in poor data.