Originally published at: Mormons fined $5m for hiding $32bn of wealth | Boing Boing
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And yet, it’s now the SEC, not the IRS, who are giving them a ticket.
The IRS is so broken when it comes to auditing religious organizations.
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The dessicated senior elders of the LD$ church are accomplished racketeers if nothing else.
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Wow. that’s barely enough fine to make even the least ethical blond, blue eyed accountant twitch.
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Exposure is far worse for them than the fine. Their primary reason for hiding their assets was not tax avoidance (since they don’t pay taxes anyway) but keeping rank-and-file Mormons (who pay a mandatory 10% tithe to the church) from knowing that the church is hording that money rather than using it for missionary work/charity/etc. as they claim. I suspect collection plates will be a little emptier this week.
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$32 billion that you know of.
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This is not the first scandal the LDS church has endured, and they are still holding strong. I don’t think this is going to even be a blip in their radar.
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Cost of Doing Business. They can probably write it off on their taxes. Oh, wait, they’re a church. They don’t pay taxes.
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Fucking slap on the wrist. How pathetic.
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Where do you think Mittens learned his ‘ahem’ financial expertise?
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OK so, that fine is .015625% of the $32 billion dollar total.
To put that in perspective, say you have $10,000 in the bank (I know, just bear with me) and you got a fine for that same percentage. It would be $1.56.
Even if they fined them 1% of that amount it would be $320 million.
Seriously - what the fuck are we even doing?
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yes, fines are all too often line item expenses (“payables”) in the lands of climax capitalism. (“violating civil law is considered the cost of doing business, eh mr moneybags?”)
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Now we need Mitt to remind us that gods are people, too.
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As far as I know, this isn’t going to happen because the LDS are one of those organisations that demand 10%. It’s pay up or get out, so I hope as many people as possible choose the latter.
After all, as all good shepherds know: if there’s no flock, there’s no fleece.
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Honestly this fine likely just pays for the SEC investigation.
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And pay no attention to the free housing and vacations on church property, the expense accounts, the interest-free loans…
Also, the photos in that article…“dessicated” is indeed the appropriate term.
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It’s not really pay out or get out, you can personally choose not to pay tithing and you won’t be kicked out of the congregation or anything, you can still attend weekly services, serve in the church, etc. The biggest consequence would be that you wouldn’t be able to worship in the LDS temples and participate in the ceremonies there. However if you started telling everyone else at church that they shouldn’t pay tithing either, then that might end up with you losing your membership in the church. But someone that goes that far is pretty likely to have renounced their membership anyway, so it’s probably a moot point.
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Sounds like a nice religion. /XLs
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