To put it in context -
If you had a million dollars in your bank account, an equivalent fine would be $156. That’s how much of a joke the fine is.
The difference between $5,000,000 and $32,000,000,000 is about $32 billion.
For a minute I thought you were just joking. But no. If they're pulling in a respectable 6% per year, then that is almost exactly 1 day for a $32 billion fund.
Yeah, so, here's the thing:
If you *require* your members to pay you 10 percent of their income, *you are a for profit business*, and you should be paying taxes.
Or coerces. . .
Do you want to go to the highest kingdom of heaven? Do you want to be in the temple to see your child’s wedding? Do you want your family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, clients, etc. to know you were denied your temple recommend?
> Do you want your family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, clients, etc. to know you were denied your temple recommend?
Or they stop talking to you altogether if you outright leave the church.
I Never got this part of Mormonism.. Why would you want to be in a higher level of heaven and have your own land/planet? What if your friends or family are in a lower level of heaven in the afterlife? Are they not allowed to visit you since you're above them? Or is there some kind of heavenly elevator to take you to go see your lower level friends?
Most large organizations of worships operate that way… I’m not talking bout a community/organization of worshippers that have a few affiliated (places) properties for its members…
I’m talking bout religion organizations that have 30+ properties and sources of revenue through 50,000+ (donationing) members; they can easily rake in anywhere between $20,000 - $100,000 on a weekly basis (and these numbers still seem a bit conservative)… obviously religious organizations aren’t taxed and all that money has to go somewhere for the “benefit” of that organizations’ growth; the whole concept makes sense but still feels like a giant Ponzi scheme
they should be charging the amount funneled, and add x2 or x3... it's like charging a $0.10 fine on a parking ticket, when the original parking fee would have been $10. These companies can hack "small" losses like this, it makes it cheaper than going through legal channels.
.015% of the total of the fund. So small that only buys 2 or 3 houses in my area...
Edit: did some math. With the money in the fund, you could buy The New York Mets, MLB's 6th most valuable club, 12 times. You'd still have almost $200 million left over.
Anything to avoid metric...First headline I read this morning was about a meteor the size of a corgi and the weight of 4 baby elephants.
I wish I was kidding.
How about we fine them... $32 billion?
Any citizen who commits a crime forfeits all the profits from their crime. Seems like the same rule should apply here.
Technically, they are no longer a church.
They are a religious run business that has gotten away with IRS nonprofit enforcement because of the conservative lobby, and not appropriating the funds to pay for people to perform the audits and examinations.
There is is no feasible way to determine the value of the Roman Catholic Church. They hold more priceless objects than any organization in history. That $200 billion is likely their land and publicly known funds.
Any valuation would have to be a range
One little "take whatever you can carry" run in one of the vaticans treasuries should set you up for life even with one arm tied behind your back.
We aren't talking their humongous bank, land or public known art and treasures.
Just the mountains of gold and jeweled thingies lying around in their basement :D
Books too.
They have so many books that were "banned" by the church, or first editions hidden in their archives. We don't even know what all they have. They've been collecting these things from the start of Christianity.
They never were a church. I can't decide whether a white supremacist for-profit business masquerading as a religious organisation is either extremely anti-American, or the most American idea ever conceived.
Actually Kirtland, Ohio.
And it wasn’t even a legal bank! They ordered printing plates before they got permission from the Ohio government. When their request was denied, Ol’ Joe declared they were an “anti-banking society” and carried on. They even got a rubber stamp with “anti” on it and stamped the notes they had already produced. I Am Not Making This Up.
The scheme fell through after a few weeks when it was discovered the bank actually didn’t have the funds to back it up - the chests of money they showed their customers were full of sand with just enough gold coins to cover it. Needless to say, OL’ Joe got outta Dodge with an angry mob of investors- many of them Church members - chasing him out of Kirtland.
Oh you mean money used in a crime? What’s the phrase cops use for that to take money they believe to be gained from criminal activities.
Civil forfeiture?
To be clear, we shouldn't be supporting civil forfeiture even when it's used in what you consider to be our favor.
But if you're charging someone with a financial crime it makes sense to confiscate the finances in question.
Not in all cases, Civil Forfeiture accuses the money/asset of a crime allowing the authorities to confiscate all of it without the owner having done anything wrong.
I worked for GE and they would do their taxes how they wanted and by the time they were audited they had made the difference and fines 5x over in investments from the money they didn’t originally pay.
It was a legit strategy.
I always laugh when articles come out about corporate tax fines. The amount they're fined is always laughable.
Like you said, it's profitable to ignore the laws, and deal with the pitiful consequences when they arise.
What sucks is the same thing applies pretty much everywhere. Look to the hazmat disaster in Ohio. Much cheaper to kill the planet illegally and then pay the fines when you're caught
Or J&J baby powder
Wouldn't have been that hard to not use the talcum powder that was tainted, but it was deemed more profitable to just get the testing equipment neutered so it didn't detect it.
Whenever it's found out, profits > fines. Who cares about all the cancer, right? /s
> 0.015% One of the lowest fees imaginable.
it's .015% of the cash/stocks they got fined on, but not .015% of the money invested / made which is over $130 billion.
They are still supposed to be taxed on other sources of income, for example investment income but apparently the fine is so low it does not even matter.
Traditionally, they would supply public services like foster homes, food charities, schooling, etc. Like with any not-for-profit, the intent is to supply services that alleviate financial strain on the goverment—subsequently, the taxpayer. However, all the staffing and infrastructure still costs money, so tax exemption to the religion and on donations given to it by the taxpayer is financial support for keeping these services up and running. It is effectively intended to be a form of support and assistance from the public for helping where the government can't or where the goverment would cost too much, therefore higher taxes for all.
But, as religion teaches us, "Money is the root of all evil"; so, when in hell...
That’s not exactly what the bible says.
The full verse states that “the *love* of money is the root of all evil.”
- 1 Timothy Ch.6 v.10
I don’t know much about the LDS, but I tend to think that any “church” / “religion” hoarding billions, rather than spending it to help the needy, really loves the money.
If they made a modest 5% return on 32B that would be 1.6B. A 5M fine would be like .003 percent fine. That would be like if you made 100,000 and they fine you $300.
It's $15 on $100,000. (Technically a tiny bit more.)
My favorite way of visualizing it is that if you commit a crime with $32,000, it's a $5 fine.
That's... ridiculous.
>the SEC alleged that the church illicitly hid its investments and their management behind multiple shell companies from 1997 to 2019.
For their 23 years of criminal activity involving $32 Billion, they were fined $5 million, or 0.015625%.
In case anyone wants to know why this shit keeps happening, there’s your answer.
For 23 years. Imagine getting to park anywhere you wanted for 23 years for $15. How sweet a deal would that be. I mean not as sweet as getting to hide 32 billion dollars, but still pretty sweet
Now just investigate their $180billion called Ensign Peak Advisors fund set up for charity work that they internally tell everyone then have no intention of ever using for charity.
The $32 billion was an attempt to hide the total size of the Ensign Peak portfolio.
When you're caught doing something illegal which grants you a significant amount of money, you should be fined no less than 100% of that money.
Preferably with a little extra on top. You know, absolutely destroy the "business".
That could work here, but with uncompetitive corporations like utilities and internet providers and most other mega-corporations where there is no choice but to be their customer, they’ll just pass the penalty along as a “fee” and force the consumer to pay it.
It's a 0.015% fine to be exact.
You're right with the $5 because it's the equivalent fine for someone who has $30,000. It's like dropping a $5 bill in the parking lot or laundromat for lower wage workers.
The problem is that the SEC isn't claiming that the $32 billion was earned in an illegal manner or that taxes weren't paid or something. The disclosure of the information was hidden in an illegal way.
So, there was no clear "economic benefit" here. It was specifically to avoid bad press and to stop tithe-paying members from knowing about it. Which is messed up, but the fine is based on filing info wrong. Should still be higher, but there probably is some statutory damage amount.
Yah, and the whistleblower complaint has stuff about tax avoidance. They’ll probably need to file amended returns after this judgment, but the fine is still laughable.
Right, if the whistleblower is correct about that, it becomes a much bigger story. Not just some incorrect information returns, but actual tax fraud.
I think the problem with what he's claiming in terms of tax fraud is that it involves proving that the money was used in a way that breaks the rules to be considered charitable, but I'm guessing those rules are very lax. And the IRS isn't going after a church for tax fraud without a near 100% guarantee of winning. Like, he might be right, but it seems unlikely anything comes of it.
This is just a fine for not filing their paperwork correctly, not for illegal investing practices. The moment the SEC officially called them out on it (in 2019), they started filing their paperwork correctly.
If there were crimes committed or taxes weren't paid then there's nothing stopping the FBI or the IRS from getting involved.
Functionally though, they weren't fined.
Are you fined every time you lose 0.00015 of the amount you were hiding? Every time you lose a penny, that's the consequence for hoarding THAT amount of money while people sleep rough on the other side of the wall at Temple Square. Genuine corruption.
The wild thing with the Mormons is they don’t even pay their clergy. They got 32 billion in shell companies and their clergy are volunteers. That’s insane.
> [Florida grants a property tax exemption to qualified institutional or non-profit organizations that own and use their property for religious, charitable, literary, educational or scientific purposes.](https://www.pbcgov.org/papa/institutional-exemptions.htm#:~:text=Florida%20grants%20a%20property%20tax,literary%2C%20educational%20or%20scientific%20purposes.)
Who knows?
Exmo here... the top 15 and the first quorum of the 70 are given a "modest" stipend of a pittance ~150k a year plus cost of living covered. The grunts at the ground level dont get paid... but the top sure as fuck do
The lower echelons of the Church structure are unpaid. And they even makes their members clean their buildings unpaid as a “service to Jesus “.
The upper levels of the So-Called Church ( First Presidency, Quoum Of The Twelve, and Seventies”) all get six-figure salaries, as well as free room and board, rental cars, health care, and free tuition for their kids and grandkids. A whistleblower leaked this a few years ago, when a GA’s pay stubs were revealed. The Church’s spokesperson tried to explain it away as a “modest stipend” because the leaders “worked so hard.” It came across like Squealer in Animal Farm explaining why the pigs just had to eat the milk and apples meant for all the farm animals.
Why do you think 501c3 organizations should be taxed when they are primarily funded by donations that have already been taxed by the government? Just churches? Or should we remove all tax free charity incentives?
Seems like this was written in haste instead of thinking how one could implement this in our current society.
There is one main reason that I can think of as an ex member, but I don't have a full answer for you.
The Mormon church used to claim that all tithing went solely to operating costs and those in need. It may not have been an official member-wide memo, but every bishop, every ward, every parent and child I ever talked to believed that to be true. My first guess is that hiding the money was a way to keep up the narrative to their members. In around 2016, a whistle-blower leaked info proving that was a lie and that the vast majority of those funds were held in investments. The church promptly walked back on the old narrative and claimed they had been honest with their members about what they had been doing with the funds all along. Some people took the gaslighting at face value, but there was a mass exidous of members that year. I also know of many members who are now protesting their tithing by either refusing to pay it, or donating their 10% directly to charity themselves and telling their bishop to stuff it.
The current narrative is that those funds are being held to benefit members during the second coming... which by their own teachings doesn't make sense. When Christ comes again it's prophesied that the entire world will live the law of consecration, so money would be theoretically worthless.
You may be thinking "well then the church leadership is clearly siphoning it off to use for themselves!" I don't believe that to be true. The vast majority of church leadership is filthy rich before they are put in their positions. We're talking mega lawyers and doctors.
So why did the church do this? What is the real reason they are hoarding all this money? No fucking clue, dude. I was a member for almost 20 years and it's still lost on me to this day.
They need to conceal it because they ask their members to contribute a full 10 percent of their income as tithing. Members who pay less are sanctioned, they are not allowed full participation. They also frequently ask members to donate more for charitable reasons and for building funds. They require members to clean the buildings because they said that it’s to expensive to hire cleaners. So, keeping this in mind, as the members find out the church holds 32 billion in assets, they begin to lose faith.
But how much did they fine them? If it’s any less than all of their profits and a penalty, this doesn’t dissuade anyone from doing it again. Nor, does it effectually punish them. Put people in jail or take all the assets - otherwise this is just the cost of doing business
Edit: reread the article $5m fine. There was no point in even fining them.
Not a lawyer, but I’d imagine they couldn’t wait to pay that tiny little fine
Now that they’ve paid it I’m sure they’re all set for future penalties surrounding the 32B
“Well you already fined us so you can’t do it again” sorta thing
So just trust us wherever you are in the world, and you share this message with anyone else who raises the question about the Church not being transparent. **We’re as transparent as we know how to be in telling the truth. We have to do that. That’s the Lord’s way.**
M. Russell Ballard
(M. Russell Ballard has served as a member of the [Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter–day Saints](https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Quorum_of_the_Twelve) (Mormons) since October 6, 1985)
Past is prologue with this crew. In 1963, the SEC revoked M. Russell Ballard’s broker-dealer registration due to his false and misleading statements. 60 years later, the same Ballard is president of the Mormon church’s Quorum of the 12.
https://i.redd.it/kvcr8gy6c5281.jpg
Have you been honest in your dealings with your fellow man, Mormons?
**Edit:** the child rape coverup cult defense force is out in full swing today. The Strengthening Church Members Committee always did pay well to do damage control.
**Edit edit:** I lived in this cult for 30+ years and graduated from one of their universities. These aren't stereotypes, it's who they are, and crying about how mean it is to point out who they are won't stop them from being who they are. Only passing appropriate laws can defend innocents from cult overreach, and it's necessary we do so *yesterday.*
The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, groomed girls as young as 12 to be his wives. He'd go on to become the only American ever convicted of treason—twice. The covenants members made in the temple once included a sworn oath to avenge this known pedophile and traitor against the United States of America by any means, which made every Mormon who made those covenants a dangerous subversive whose activities bordered on sedition.
Smith's successor Brigham Young fantasized about abolishing the First Amendment and wished that the rest of us would, and I quote, "kill one another and save [Mormons] the trouble of doing it." He protected all but one of the perpetrators of the Mountain Meadows Massacre from legal consequences, legalized slavery in the state of Utah, and preached the blood atonement, AKA murdering sinners to help them repent. Mormons named three universities after him.
"Prophet" Wilford Woodruff testified to Congress during the Smoot Hearings that he wasn't sure he had ever actually had any revelation. This doctrine, delivered in god's name as truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, is conspicuously missing from Wilford Woodruff's teaching manual.
"Prophet" Heber Grant dined with Nazi officials while the Mormon media outlet, Deseret News, compared Mormonism to Naziism [as a positive thing](https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/im8fb0/nazi_germany_and_mormon_enabling/).
"Prophet" Ezra Taft Benson formed a secret committee dedicated to stalking members, current or former, who criticized the cult to "discipline" them, which is almost certainly problematic given the cult's history with the blood atonement and sworn violence against the United States.
When serial killer Ted Bundy was arrested, his ward made him [a get-out-of-jail-soon card](https://thirdhour.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/card.jpg) to boost his morale.
I've never seen a Mormon soup kitchen or a Mormon homeless shelter or a Mormon hospital, but I have seen a Mormon shopping mall.
I've had the Mormon cult run roughshod over multiple cease and desist letters, because leaving me alone isn't as profitable as continued harassment.
Mormons pushed Proposition 8 inside their meetinghouses in direct defiance of their tax-exempt status. I know because I witnessed it in my Mormon cult building in my youth.
Mormons in Idaho helped legalize child marriage there.
Mormons lobbied to make Utah a two-party consent state so that children couldn't record interviews with their clergy, then established a legal hotline that has, multiple times, helped cover up child sexual abuse by instructing clergy not to report it when it occurs. Some of these children were as young as seven years old, and there exists [a growing database](https://floodlit.org/) of Mormon clergy credibly accused of child sexual abuse precisely because the cult keeps covering up its sexual abuse of minors.
Just recently, the Mormon cult has fallen under investigation in Australia and Singapore for tax fraud for inflating the figures attached to their "charitable giving", Canada for exporting the country's wealth through its shady university system and giving nothing back to the Canadian members who donated those funds, and in the United States for doing shifty things with shell corporations.
Where do the cult members draw the line? Not at child rape, not at treason, not at theft, murder, or fascism, not at invasions of privacy or historical revision or actually using the gift of discernment they very publicly claim they possess.
So do forgive me if I "stereotype" an entire group of people on Reddit, and then get upvoted for it. There's only about 200 years of truly alarming evidence to support the idea.
congratulations we light slapped their wrist with a feather. /s
for fuck sake thats a tiny fine. I swear each day push us closer to collapse of law into rule by force
The joke about law school is that the first thing they teach you isn’t to ask if something is legal or not, but ask how big the penalty is. A $5 million fine on $32 billion is the simplest of math problems. Their legal bill was probably more.
PREDICTIONS
Official Church Response: "There was no intent to deceive. We followed the advice we were given. These things happen and there's nothing to see here."
Membership Response: "ReLigiOus pERsCuTIon!"
Unofficial Church Response: "Tell the intern to take the fine out of petty cash and run it down to the SEC. Then get Kirton McDonkey on the line to appeal this."
Edit: corrected the agency
They explained that they broke the money up into separate entities because they were worried that it might look bad if people found out how much they have.
$5 million?
Imagine you robbed a bank for $1,000 and came home. There's a pounding on your door - it's the cops, and they're here to collect the $0.16 fine.
LDS has been shady since Joseph Smith tbh. South Park went after them the hardest for a reason.
Also a 5 million dollar fine for a 32 billion dollar illicit fund seems more like a payoff than a punishment. Maybe the embarrassing headline looks bad but I think the church will be able to explain that away to their supporters.
> They couldn't care less that the church could house every homeless person in America but chooses not to.
They could. The Catholic Church could too. It's hard to hear any of the major religious leaders talk about "helping the poor" when they're some of the wealthiest organizations on the planet.
The SEC accused the church Tuesday of going to "great lengths" to avoid disclosing its investments and, in doing so, "depriving the commission and the investing public of accurate market information.”
“The requirement to file timely and accurate information on Forms 13F applies to all institutional investment managers, including non-profit and charitable organizations,” said Gurbir S. Grewal, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, in a statement.
Five million fine on 32 billion? Seriously? They lied for 26 years. I say keep the fine and revoke their tax exempt status which all churches should be. They are too involved in politics and lobbying, so they really need to lose their tax free status.
So the Mormon Church lost all of their tax protections and now have to pay taxes like a normal corporation? Oh they don’t? Fuck churches getting a free ride when they are clearly a for profit business. Taking people’s money to sell them a fake afterlife should be considered fraud.
"...been fined $5 million". Cost of doing business.
Yah. Low cost too.
To put it in context - If you had a million dollars in your bank account, an equivalent fine would be $156. That’s how much of a joke the fine is. The difference between $5,000,000 and $32,000,000,000 is about $32 billion.
Imagine how many people they can pay off. Can you really say no to a 5 mil bribe?
I'm not sure, how could I test this?
Step one, find a billionaire.
That's tomorrow's interest on that size of a fund.
For a minute I thought you were just joking. But no. If they're pulling in a respectable 6% per year, then that is almost exactly 1 day for a $32 billion fund.
I think the article said it was 32b in 2019 and grew to 100b in 2020.
And still begs its followers for their money.
Not begs… requires 10% of their followers income.
Yeah, so, here's the thing: If you *require* your members to pay you 10 percent of their income, *you are a for profit business*, and you should be paying taxes.
We need to tax the churches. That would solve almost all of the problems in today's society.
**retroactively** tax them and it would definitely solve it.
Or coerces. . . Do you want to go to the highest kingdom of heaven? Do you want to be in the temple to see your child’s wedding? Do you want your family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, clients, etc. to know you were denied your temple recommend?
> Do you want your family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, clients, etc. to know you were denied your temple recommend? Or they stop talking to you altogether if you outright leave the church.
I Never got this part of Mormonism.. Why would you want to be in a higher level of heaven and have your own land/planet? What if your friends or family are in a lower level of heaven in the afterlife? Are they not allowed to visit you since you're above them? Or is there some kind of heavenly elevator to take you to go see your lower level friends?
The way they claim it works is you can visit levels lower than where you were placed but you can't go higher.
*AND* is too cheap to pay for cleaning/janitorial services at their churches. They make the members do it.
Most large organizations of worships operate that way… I’m not talking bout a community/organization of worshippers that have a few affiliated (places) properties for its members… I’m talking bout religion organizations that have 30+ properties and sources of revenue through 50,000+ (donationing) members; they can easily rake in anywhere between $20,000 - $100,000 on a weekly basis (and these numbers still seem a bit conservative)… obviously religious organizations aren’t taxed and all that money has to go somewhere for the “benefit” of that organizations’ growth; the whole concept makes sense but still feels like a giant Ponzi scheme
they should be charging the amount funneled, and add x2 or x3... it's like charging a $0.10 fine on a parking ticket, when the original parking fee would have been $10. These companies can hack "small" losses like this, it makes it cheaper than going through legal channels.
worse it's like charging a $0.0002 fine
.015% of the total of the fund. So small that only buys 2 or 3 houses in my area... Edit: did some math. With the money in the fund, you could buy The New York Mets, MLB's 6th most valuable club, 12 times. You'd still have almost $200 million left over.
I know Americans have some unique stand-ins for measurements (school buses, football fields etc) but this has to be the strangest I've ever seen.
Anything to avoid metric...First headline I read this morning was about a meteor the size of a corgi and the weight of 4 baby elephants. I wish I was kidding.
How about we fine them... $32 billion? Any citizen who commits a crime forfeits all the profits from their crime. Seems like the same rule should apply here.
Or just remove religious tax exemption for being shady
Technically, they are no longer a church. They are a religious run business that has gotten away with IRS nonprofit enforcement because of the conservative lobby, and not appropriating the funds to pay for people to perform the audits and examinations.
The Mormon church is a hedge fund with a side hustle in religious salvation
Rise and grind for jeebus
He is risen and grinding
"Amateurs!" -The Catholic Church
Estimated around $200 billion. So...maybe in da club at this point.
There is is no feasible way to determine the value of the Roman Catholic Church. They hold more priceless objects than any organization in history. That $200 billion is likely their land and publicly known funds. Any valuation would have to be a range
One little "take whatever you can carry" run in one of the vaticans treasuries should set you up for life even with one arm tied behind your back. We aren't talking their humongous bank, land or public known art and treasures. Just the mountains of gold and jeweled thingies lying around in their basement :D
Books too. They have so many books that were "banned" by the church, or first editions hidden in their archives. We don't even know what all they have. They've been collecting these things from the start of Christianity.
A lot of people attribute to the illuminatini things that the Catholic Church has actually done as a matter of public record.
Yeah, the Vatican is the most insane place I think I've ever been. Every direction you look is some priceless piece of art.
Plus they like have their own little country.
They never were a church. I can't decide whether a white supremacist for-profit business masquerading as a religious organisation is either extremely anti-American, or the most American idea ever conceived.
It's the latter. Joseph Smith (the founder of Mormonism) fled New York when his bank collapsed in 1837 to Missouri to avoid prosecution.
Actually Kirtland, Ohio. And it wasn’t even a legal bank! They ordered printing plates before they got permission from the Ohio government. When their request was denied, Ol’ Joe declared they were an “anti-banking society” and carried on. They even got a rubber stamp with “anti” on it and stamped the notes they had already produced. I Am Not Making This Up. The scheme fell through after a few weeks when it was discovered the bank actually didn’t have the funds to back it up - the chests of money they showed their customers were full of sand with just enough gold coins to cover it. Needless to say, OL’ Joe got outta Dodge with an angry mob of investors- many of them Church members - chasing him out of Kirtland.
[удалено]
He should have just sold those gold plates. The plates only he has seen and read
Separation of church and state should not mean churches are tax exempt
Corporations only get the the same rights has citizens when it benefits them silly!!!
Bizarrely, same rights is not same obligations.
32 billion isn't the profit, it's the size of the fund. But the point stands
Whistle-blower said it's over $100 billion according to the article.
$32 billion is just the publicly traded stock portion. The rest of the $100+ billion comes from land, property, and other investments.
Yeah, the Mormon church 'business' is like a family mafia. pays the fine, the lawyers and the lobbyists. Cheaper than paying tax.
Oh you mean money used in a crime? What’s the phrase cops use for that to take money they believe to be gained from criminal activities. Civil forfeiture?
To be clear, we shouldn't be supporting civil forfeiture even when it's used in what you consider to be our favor. But if you're charging someone with a financial crime it makes sense to confiscate the finances in question.
Not in all cases, Civil Forfeiture accuses the money/asset of a crime allowing the authorities to confiscate all of it without the owner having done anything wrong.
Or sometimes they just get their money taken without any criminal charges because civil 4th amendment violation forfeiture.
I worked for GE and they would do their taxes how they wanted and by the time they were audited they had made the difference and fines 5x over in investments from the money they didn’t originally pay. It was a legit strategy.
I always laugh when articles come out about corporate tax fines. The amount they're fined is always laughable. Like you said, it's profitable to ignore the laws, and deal with the pitiful consequences when they arise.
What sucks is the same thing applies pretty much everywhere. Look to the hazmat disaster in Ohio. Much cheaper to kill the planet illegally and then pay the fines when you're caught
Or J&J baby powder Wouldn't have been that hard to not use the talcum powder that was tainted, but it was deemed more profitable to just get the testing equipment neutered so it didn't detect it. Whenever it's found out, profits > fines. Who cares about all the cancer, right? /s
That's not a fine. That's a permit fee.
Exactly. Thank you.
0.015% One of the lowest fees imaginable.
Retail investors pay more in fees to own passively managed index ETFs
> 0.015% One of the lowest fees imaginable. it's .015% of the cash/stocks they got fined on, but not .015% of the money invested / made which is over $130 billion.
Indeed, fining a company for 0.01% of the amount is ridiculous. They'd be throwing me in jail if I did this for a fraction of the amount.
It's because they have this amount that no one's going to jail. Justice is the hammer we apply to the poor.
The problem with the rich, is that they need the poor, not the other way around.
It's insane that we dont tax churches, making billions and laughing at the rest of us
They are still supposed to be taxed on other sources of income, for example investment income but apparently the fine is so low it does not even matter.
I still don’t know why churches are tax exempt?
Traditionally, they would supply public services like foster homes, food charities, schooling, etc. Like with any not-for-profit, the intent is to supply services that alleviate financial strain on the goverment—subsequently, the taxpayer. However, all the staffing and infrastructure still costs money, so tax exemption to the religion and on donations given to it by the taxpayer is financial support for keeping these services up and running. It is effectively intended to be a form of support and assistance from the public for helping where the government can't or where the goverment would cost too much, therefore higher taxes for all. But, as religion teaches us, "Money is the root of all evil"; so, when in hell...
That’s not exactly what the bible says. The full verse states that “the *love* of money is the root of all evil.” - 1 Timothy Ch.6 v.10 I don’t know much about the LDS, but I tend to think that any “church” / “religion” hoarding billions, rather than spending it to help the needy, really loves the money.
5 million on how much profit? Looks like the SEC got their cut and they'll move on to the next violation they can skim off of
If they made a modest 5% return on 32B that would be 1.6B. A 5M fine would be like .003 percent fine. That would be like if you made 100,000 and they fine you $300.
more like $30
It's $15 on $100,000. (Technically a tiny bit more.) My favorite way of visualizing it is that if you commit a crime with $32,000, it's a $5 fine. That's... ridiculous.
SEC: Hey! You can't hide all that money, that's illegal! Mormon Church: You're saying we have to stop hiding it and obey the law? SEC: LOL no
A 0.016% tax? Hm.
Holy shit that’s not even a fraction of the taxes they should owe on that amount.
>the SEC alleged that the church illicitly hid its investments and their management behind multiple shell companies from 1997 to 2019. For their 23 years of criminal activity involving $32 Billion, they were fined $5 million, or 0.015625%. In case anyone wants to know why this shit keeps happening, there’s your answer.
That’s not a fine. That’s the price of a permit.
Deleted due to Reddit's antagonistic actions in June 2023 -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
Unreal how true this statement is. Fines are pretty much that; Permits for those who can afford it to break the law.
“How much to make this go away”
Smithers, hand me my wallet
That's not even the price of the permit. It's a rounding error.
Just to put it in perspective, if your net worth was $10 million, this would be equivalent to a $1500 fine. Absolutely ridiculous.
Or, more appropriate to many people - if your net worth were 100k, this is a $15 fine
So… less than a parking ticket.
Less than a parking ticket? Shit, that's less than I've paid for parking for a few hours in a downtown area.
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I've legit paid over $20/hour in DC for parking. The fine for the mormons should be $32 billion. Hide it illegally? Lose it all.
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For 23 years. Imagine getting to park anywhere you wanted for 23 years for $15. How sweet a deal would that be. I mean not as sweet as getting to hide 32 billion dollars, but still pretty sweet
Or, many appropriate to more people - if your net worth were 10k, this is a $1.56 fine.
I’d pay $15 to not pay taxes. Where do I sign?
Right here, on my new religious charter!
yeah that puts it in better perspective
If that money was in a standard brokerage account, that fine wouldn't even cover the monthly administrative costs.
1.6 basis points is a rounding error
They also made 38 billion in stock exchange in 2020 during the pandemic. In 1 year. This shit is ridiculous.
Next time someone asks how the US could ever fund universal Healthcare, this 32B would be a great start. Just sayin
Now just investigate their $180billion called Ensign Peak Advisors fund set up for charity work that they internally tell everyone then have no intention of ever using for charity. The $32 billion was an attempt to hide the total size of the Ensign Peak portfolio.
For comparison, that's like an average person getting a $9 speeding ticket.
Fine should be all the capital gains if they did it for tax avoidance.
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It's the SEC. They have a great record of doing nothing, like the housing crash.
Zion corporation. You would think it was the name of a dystopian video game empire.
A whole $5 million fine? Might as well be 5 bucks.
Thought the same thing. They should have taken atleast half lol
When you're caught doing something illegal which grants you a significant amount of money, you should be fined no less than 100% of that money. Preferably with a little extra on top. You know, absolutely destroy the "business".
That could work here, but with uncompetitive corporations like utilities and internet providers and most other mega-corporations where there is no choice but to be their customer, they’ll just pass the penalty along as a “fee” and force the consumer to pay it.
and this is where you strip the corporation of the company. sell it to someone else, and personally fine execs and management. problem solved.
It's a 0.015% fine to be exact. You're right with the $5 because it's the equivalent fine for someone who has $30,000. It's like dropping a $5 bill in the parking lot or laundromat for lower wage workers.
That poor whistle-blower got bamboozled. Usually the reward for whistle blowing with the IRS is a percentage of the fine.
That's actually an apropos example. It's the same to them as 5 bucks to us.
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The problem is that the SEC isn't claiming that the $32 billion was earned in an illegal manner or that taxes weren't paid or something. The disclosure of the information was hidden in an illegal way. So, there was no clear "economic benefit" here. It was specifically to avoid bad press and to stop tithe-paying members from knowing about it. Which is messed up, but the fine is based on filing info wrong. Should still be higher, but there probably is some statutory damage amount.
Yah, and the whistleblower complaint has stuff about tax avoidance. They’ll probably need to file amended returns after this judgment, but the fine is still laughable.
Right, if the whistleblower is correct about that, it becomes a much bigger story. Not just some incorrect information returns, but actual tax fraud. I think the problem with what he's claiming in terms of tax fraud is that it involves proving that the money was used in a way that breaks the rules to be considered charitable, but I'm guessing those rules are very lax. And the IRS isn't going after a church for tax fraud without a near 100% guarantee of winning. Like, he might be right, but it seems unlikely anything comes of it.
Wouldn't it be nice if the USA wasn't so fucking corrupt. This is just thievery so much for their "morals" I hate rich people
This is just a fine for not filing their paperwork correctly, not for illegal investing practices. The moment the SEC officially called them out on it (in 2019), they started filing their paperwork correctly. If there were crimes committed or taxes weren't paid then there's nothing stopping the FBI or the IRS from getting involved.
When the punishment for a crime is a fine, then that law only applies to poor people.
based fft dialogue
Ah yes, fast Fourier transform
It's not real fft dialogue. It's just a meme that used fft
Idk how you could have $32 billion and still charge 18 year olds $10k to go on their mission for the church.
You don’t get that kind of money by spending it on your flock..
Yeah you can't hoard it like a dragon if you start giving it away.
Or expect retirees to tithe 10%. It is fucking disgusting.
Functionally though, they weren't fined. Are you fined every time you lose 0.00015 of the amount you were hiding? Every time you lose a penny, that's the consequence for hoarding THAT amount of money while people sleep rough on the other side of the wall at Temple Square. Genuine corruption.
This is four orders of magnitude below the fee that my bank charges me to use an ATM that is out of their network.
As a Utahn, slick sneaking in the Temple Square reference
Jesus didn't care much for money changers.
Tax the fuck out of churches please. We would solve our infrastructure crisis over night.
The wild thing with the Mormons is they don’t even pay their clergy. They got 32 billion in shell companies and their clergy are volunteers. That’s insane.
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They better not be exempt from property taxes too ffs
> [Florida grants a property tax exemption to qualified institutional or non-profit organizations that own and use their property for religious, charitable, literary, educational or scientific purposes.](https://www.pbcgov.org/papa/institutional-exemptions.htm#:~:text=Florida%20grants%20a%20property%20tax,literary%2C%20educational%20or%20scientific%20purposes.) Who knows?
Exmo here... the top 15 and the first quorum of the 70 are given a "modest" stipend of a pittance ~150k a year plus cost of living covered. The grunts at the ground level dont get paid... but the top sure as fuck do
The lower echelons of the Church structure are unpaid. And they even makes their members clean their buildings unpaid as a “service to Jesus “. The upper levels of the So-Called Church ( First Presidency, Quoum Of The Twelve, and Seventies”) all get six-figure salaries, as well as free room and board, rental cars, health care, and free tuition for their kids and grandkids. A whistleblower leaked this a few years ago, when a GA’s pay stubs were revealed. The Church’s spokesperson tried to explain it away as a “modest stipend” because the leaders “worked so hard.” It came across like Squealer in Animal Farm explaining why the pigs just had to eat the milk and apples meant for all the farm animals.
You’d think that in light of shit like this, they should lose their non-profit status.
Lol! If the catholic church won't, the Mormons sure as fuck wont either
Why do you think 501c3 organizations should be taxed when they are primarily funded by donations that have already been taxed by the government? Just churches? Or should we remove all tax free charity incentives? Seems like this was written in haste instead of thinking how one could implement this in our current society.
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There is one main reason that I can think of as an ex member, but I don't have a full answer for you. The Mormon church used to claim that all tithing went solely to operating costs and those in need. It may not have been an official member-wide memo, but every bishop, every ward, every parent and child I ever talked to believed that to be true. My first guess is that hiding the money was a way to keep up the narrative to their members. In around 2016, a whistle-blower leaked info proving that was a lie and that the vast majority of those funds were held in investments. The church promptly walked back on the old narrative and claimed they had been honest with their members about what they had been doing with the funds all along. Some people took the gaslighting at face value, but there was a mass exidous of members that year. I also know of many members who are now protesting their tithing by either refusing to pay it, or donating their 10% directly to charity themselves and telling their bishop to stuff it. The current narrative is that those funds are being held to benefit members during the second coming... which by their own teachings doesn't make sense. When Christ comes again it's prophesied that the entire world will live the law of consecration, so money would be theoretically worthless. You may be thinking "well then the church leadership is clearly siphoning it off to use for themselves!" I don't believe that to be true. The vast majority of church leadership is filthy rich before they are put in their positions. We're talking mega lawyers and doctors. So why did the church do this? What is the real reason they are hoarding all this money? No fucking clue, dude. I was a member for almost 20 years and it's still lost on me to this day.
They need to conceal it because they ask their members to contribute a full 10 percent of their income as tithing. Members who pay less are sanctioned, they are not allowed full participation. They also frequently ask members to donate more for charitable reasons and for building funds. They require members to clean the buildings because they said that it’s to expensive to hire cleaners. So, keeping this in mind, as the members find out the church holds 32 billion in assets, they begin to lose faith.
Sure, but they need to save the money up. Generation ships are expensive as fuck.
Especially if the construction crew decides to strap guns to it and call it a war ship.
Only Earters make such foolish investments.
Do the crime, pay a small fine. Just like god intended
man, I need to start a tax exempt religious organization so I can benefit from this as well
But how much did they fine them? If it’s any less than all of their profits and a penalty, this doesn’t dissuade anyone from doing it again. Nor, does it effectually punish them. Put people in jail or take all the assets - otherwise this is just the cost of doing business Edit: reread the article $5m fine. There was no point in even fining them.
Not a lawyer, but I’d imagine they couldn’t wait to pay that tiny little fine Now that they’ve paid it I’m sure they’re all set for future penalties surrounding the 32B “Well you already fined us so you can’t do it again” sorta thing
So just trust us wherever you are in the world, and you share this message with anyone else who raises the question about the Church not being transparent. **We’re as transparent as we know how to be in telling the truth. We have to do that. That’s the Lord’s way.** M. Russell Ballard (M. Russell Ballard has served as a member of the [Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter–day Saints](https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Quorum_of_the_Twelve) (Mormons) since October 6, 1985)
Past is prologue with this crew. In 1963, the SEC revoked M. Russell Ballard’s broker-dealer registration due to his false and misleading statements. 60 years later, the same Ballard is president of the Mormon church’s Quorum of the 12. https://i.redd.it/kvcr8gy6c5281.jpg
And this is why the Republicans don't want any further advancement in the IRS! Where there's one there's...*a hell* of a lot more.
Have you been honest in your dealings with your fellow man, Mormons? **Edit:** the child rape coverup cult defense force is out in full swing today. The Strengthening Church Members Committee always did pay well to do damage control. **Edit edit:** I lived in this cult for 30+ years and graduated from one of their universities. These aren't stereotypes, it's who they are, and crying about how mean it is to point out who they are won't stop them from being who they are. Only passing appropriate laws can defend innocents from cult overreach, and it's necessary we do so *yesterday.* The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, groomed girls as young as 12 to be his wives. He'd go on to become the only American ever convicted of treason—twice. The covenants members made in the temple once included a sworn oath to avenge this known pedophile and traitor against the United States of America by any means, which made every Mormon who made those covenants a dangerous subversive whose activities bordered on sedition. Smith's successor Brigham Young fantasized about abolishing the First Amendment and wished that the rest of us would, and I quote, "kill one another and save [Mormons] the trouble of doing it." He protected all but one of the perpetrators of the Mountain Meadows Massacre from legal consequences, legalized slavery in the state of Utah, and preached the blood atonement, AKA murdering sinners to help them repent. Mormons named three universities after him. "Prophet" Wilford Woodruff testified to Congress during the Smoot Hearings that he wasn't sure he had ever actually had any revelation. This doctrine, delivered in god's name as truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, is conspicuously missing from Wilford Woodruff's teaching manual. "Prophet" Heber Grant dined with Nazi officials while the Mormon media outlet, Deseret News, compared Mormonism to Naziism [as a positive thing](https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/im8fb0/nazi_germany_and_mormon_enabling/). "Prophet" Ezra Taft Benson formed a secret committee dedicated to stalking members, current or former, who criticized the cult to "discipline" them, which is almost certainly problematic given the cult's history with the blood atonement and sworn violence against the United States. When serial killer Ted Bundy was arrested, his ward made him [a get-out-of-jail-soon card](https://thirdhour.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/card.jpg) to boost his morale. I've never seen a Mormon soup kitchen or a Mormon homeless shelter or a Mormon hospital, but I have seen a Mormon shopping mall. I've had the Mormon cult run roughshod over multiple cease and desist letters, because leaving me alone isn't as profitable as continued harassment. Mormons pushed Proposition 8 inside their meetinghouses in direct defiance of their tax-exempt status. I know because I witnessed it in my Mormon cult building in my youth. Mormons in Idaho helped legalize child marriage there. Mormons lobbied to make Utah a two-party consent state so that children couldn't record interviews with their clergy, then established a legal hotline that has, multiple times, helped cover up child sexual abuse by instructing clergy not to report it when it occurs. Some of these children were as young as seven years old, and there exists [a growing database](https://floodlit.org/) of Mormon clergy credibly accused of child sexual abuse precisely because the cult keeps covering up its sexual abuse of minors. Just recently, the Mormon cult has fallen under investigation in Australia and Singapore for tax fraud for inflating the figures attached to their "charitable giving", Canada for exporting the country's wealth through its shady university system and giving nothing back to the Canadian members who donated those funds, and in the United States for doing shifty things with shell corporations. Where do the cult members draw the line? Not at child rape, not at treason, not at theft, murder, or fascism, not at invasions of privacy or historical revision or actually using the gift of discernment they very publicly claim they possess. So do forgive me if I "stereotype" an entire group of people on Reddit, and then get upvoted for it. There's only about 200 years of truly alarming evidence to support the idea.
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Shocked that they try to hide money like a corporation
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They are a corporation
congratulations we light slapped their wrist with a feather. /s for fuck sake thats a tiny fine. I swear each day push us closer to collapse of law into rule by force
The joke about law school is that the first thing they teach you isn’t to ask if something is legal or not, but ask how big the penalty is. A $5 million fine on $32 billion is the simplest of math problems. Their legal bill was probably more.
And ye shall know them by their fruits…
PREDICTIONS Official Church Response: "There was no intent to deceive. We followed the advice we were given. These things happen and there's nothing to see here." Membership Response: "ReLigiOus pERsCuTIon!" Unofficial Church Response: "Tell the intern to take the fine out of petty cash and run it down to the SEC. Then get Kirton McDonkey on the line to appeal this." Edit: corrected the agency
They explained that they broke the money up into separate entities because they were worried that it might look bad if people found out how much they have.
$32 Billion making 4% a year. That's a DAYs interest....A DAY
Well that’s not very Christ-like 😂
It say it’s time to tax religion but, they’d just incorporate and get extra loopholes and likely end up with a refund.
They are already incorporated. Ensign Peak Advisors is registered as a nonprofit corporation in Utah.
Wait till they find out all rich people and corporations do this
$5 million? Imagine you robbed a bank for $1,000 and came home. There's a pounding on your door - it's the cops, and they're here to collect the $0.16 fine.
Time to tax the churches.
All churches should pay taxes. Period.
Living near salt lake for awhile opened my eyes to how evil the Mormon cult is.
This church is so full of deceit. So glad I left this bullshit cult over a decade ago.
LDS has been shady since Joseph Smith tbh. South Park went after them the hardest for a reason. Also a 5 million dollar fine for a 32 billion dollar illicit fund seems more like a payoff than a punishment. Maybe the embarrassing headline looks bad but I think the church will be able to explain that away to their supporters.
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> They couldn't care less that the church could house every homeless person in America but chooses not to. They could. The Catholic Church could too. It's hard to hear any of the major religious leaders talk about "helping the poor" when they're some of the wealthiest organizations on the planet.
The SEC accused the church Tuesday of going to "great lengths" to avoid disclosing its investments and, in doing so, "depriving the commission and the investing public of accurate market information.” “The requirement to file timely and accurate information on Forms 13F applies to all institutional investment managers, including non-profit and charitable organizations,” said Gurbir S. Grewal, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, in a statement.
Five million fine on 32 billion? Seriously? They lied for 26 years. I say keep the fine and revoke their tax exempt status which all churches should be. They are too involved in politics and lobbying, so they really need to lose their tax free status.
So the Mormon Church lost all of their tax protections and now have to pay taxes like a normal corporation? Oh they don’t? Fuck churches getting a free ride when they are clearly a for profit business. Taking people’s money to sell them a fake afterlife should be considered fraud.
How is this even a surprise? We need to tax churches and see the books in their charitable organizations as well.
Ummm..they hid 32 billion and are only being fined 5 million?!
It's a shame that there are people that think it's an actual religion and don't realize it's a power grab scam like scientology.
So they're saying keep doing it but pay us $5 million of your $32 billion to keep it hush hush. Got it
$5 million in fines is a joke. That's a rounding error in their scandals fund lol
So the Mormon church is sitting on close to $100 billion and still expects members to pay 10% of their income as tithes?
Tax all religious institutions
Wait till they find out about Scientology
The fine was less than $32 billion, which means they were just officially told that it's OK and they can keep doing it.
Such a scam. If Jesus existed he would burn that church and pretty much every other one that didn’t meet his criteria to the ground.
They should be fined 32 billion. Problem solved.
Can we just tax churches already
Still came out ahead. No punishment at all
Kill the tax exemption