I would like to see the church pressured and criticize about its lack of financial transparency. Members can give all the excuses they want, but if you say you only support charities with financial transparency, they have no answer. Just say the church doesn't meet your standards.

Essays about polygamy and videos about garments are the church's way of covering its ass. See we're not hiding anything. Move on, nothing to see here. Meanwhile, don't ask where your tithing money is going, and why most churches survive on a lot less then 10% of members' income and have paid clergy.

It is patently obvious that where you have a non-profit church entity which is part of a much bigger corporation of with profit companies, there is the very real potential of major corruption, especially where there is no accountability whatsoever to publish its financials.
Even more so when we are talking about a very large and extensive corporation like the LDS Corporation which involves many billions of dollars, and where there is absolutely zero accountability to the government in its non profit operation.
The US government needs to change its policy as a matter of urgency and require full annual financial disclosure and transparency from these major non profit religious organisations. The LDS church must publish full annual financial statements in its UK operations and in other countries.
The US government needs to wake up to the very real danger of possible mass financial corruption within the vastly wealthy LDS church and indeed other religious organisations who refuse to publish figures.
You only need to read the recent LDS Essays to witness the extraordinary lengths the church has gone to in concealing the truth about its history and in its endeavour to avoid any admission whatsoever of this obvious deceit, which is on a massive scale and covers many long years.
In today's world of mass financial dishonesty, money laundering etc., you would think that this would be an obvious course of action for any responsible government to take, to ring fence and safeguard the hard earned taxes that its citizens have to pay.

mormonfileleaks.com the 2012 financial document that describes the Mormon charity as:

Question 1 - The charity's aims
What are your charity's aims?
The Charity has the general aim of assisting The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ("the Church") to grow its membership and to provide facilities for them to reach out, work with, and provide services to the wider community.
The Charity assists members of the Church and others in need of religious assistance or in conditions of need, hardship, sickness or distress.


Maybe this points to relief of poverty, however looking at how funding is allocated, they list the following:

Charitable activities - £ 000s
Provision of worship facilities. - 24,314
Missionary Work - 6,937
Geneology Work - 5,669

It appears that all of the charitable activities are directed at maintaining and expanding the charity itself.

Also some of its expenditure has been deemed 'non charitable'.

I assume the above figures are taken from the UK filing with the Charity Commission. If so, at least £2m p.a. is spent on the 2 temples (London and Preston) which cost more than £200 million. Preston, the more recent is estimated to have cost £100m whereas London was built in 1958 so historic cost will be much lower. However, the current value would be extremely high.

The Supreme Court (of the UK) and the European Court of Justice have both decided that the temples do not qualify as charitable expenditure because no public benefit is involved.

Therefore the so called Mormon charity spends its money on expanding its worship services, that are all directed to temple ordinances, that the highest courts in the UK and Europe have decided is not 'charitable'.

The 'humanitarian aid' claimed to be spent by the church is from additional (to tithing) donations by members. The church does not spend money on humanitarian aid, it merely acts as a conduit for member donations to projects.

IMO, the church's UK charitable company no longer qualifies as a charity under UK law because a UK charity has to be exclusively charitable (i.e. no non charitable expenditure) and to qualify as 'charitable' there must be a public benefit. The highest courts have decided there is no public benefit derived from Mormon temples in the UK.

The illegal consequence of this is the church is receiving subsidies from the British Treasury to which it is entitled.

Tom Phillips

Salvation Army does so much regardless of the persons race or religion, and they do it everyday, all over the place. Homeless shelters, food banks, soup kitchens, etc. Catholic Charities as well. If there's a natural disaster somewhere in the world, they'll send a few million dollars ONE time, send out press releases, moroni toots his horn, Deseret News makes it front page story, etc. It's like a billionaire tossing a penny. Name one homeless shelter TSCC operates. Name one food bank TSCC operates that is open to any race or religion. Makes me puke! They probably invest money in anti-vomit pharmaceuticals. (new thread)

One of my biggest problems with the lds church. That and baptizing anyone with a pulse. Whether they understand what they are getting into or not.

Actually, baptizing everyone without a pulse too.

The Mormon church will never do this of its own accord. The best thing to do would be to contact U.S. legislators and demand that *any* charity that accepts tax-exempt money be forced to publish its financials. In the internet age, there is no excuse for not doing so. A small, local charity could do it on a Facebook page or a free message board.

I also think that the U.S. should follow Great Britain's lead and insist that any charity that accepts tax-exempt money use those funds in a manner that benefits the wider community. Therefore money that goes to temples could not be tax-exempt money.

In addition, I believe that any tax-exempt funds that are donated to churches should be limited to a certain percentage of someone's income, perhaps 3%. It really doesn't take more than that to run a church. If people want to donate more, fine, but they shouldn't get a tax write-off for doing so.

I agree. The church's practice if keeping its financial statements should be a bigger issue than it really is. Besides the obvious potential for corruption I think members would be shocked to find out their church is one of the worst charities out there. For a politically conservative culture that is keen on demonizing the federal government for being a big bloated beaurocracy that "wastes tax payers dollars" they are surprisingly clueless about their own church, which likely takes more of their own money, being FAR more wasteful and corrupt.

Mormons have this perception that the LDS church us the greatest charity in the world but they don't realize it's the biggest Scrooge of them all, except for maybe Scientology.

If the LDS church is such a great steward of the Lords money and "does SOOOO much good" as so many members like to proclaim, it shouldn't be afraid of releasing their financial statements.

There's simply no excuse for not making their financial statements. The only reason organizations would want to keep them secret is because they have something to hide.

I wish I was still a member so that I could tell the bishop and stake president I will pay my tithing as soon as they they can provide me an audited annual financial of the organization I am asked to donate my hard earned money.

I think the church has too much influence in the political corridors of power in the USA.
Like many multi nationals, they know all the dodges to conceal and move around vast amounts of money.
With the corruption so widespread and involving vast amounts of money I just cannot see the political will to challenge it head on and bring the perpetrators to justice.
Corporate corruption has just got too big.

It's more than that. Charities have too much influence in the US (some are run by people who have influence in politics), which is why I doubt that reform will ever happen. 5% minimum is pathetic, and shows that many charities are outright frauds (especially when there are reports of investigations). Perhaps the focus of reform should be in other countries where the influence is less.

I would love to see the laws changed in the US. I just don't see how that would happen. It would be interesting to see a budget for each chapel. How much money members donate and how that money is spent. I also agree that any building not open to the public should not be tax exempt. You can bet it's not going to happen in the US.

I just think if members ask why you left, secret church finances make a better reason than old Joe's 14 y.o. wives.

Does anyone know if the educational loop hole in Canadian law has been dealt with? Last figures had 89% of Canadian tithing going to BYU.

Is it just me or does it seem like the church has so much money it doesn't really have a plan of what to do with it. Recent investment that come to mind:
1) $600,000,000 to buy 2% of Florida last year?
2) $5,000,000,000 money pit shopping mall with a "retractable roof sports stadium roof" at Temple square?
3) Untold millions for a land development residential project west of Woodscross (NW SLC) recently?
4) A 40 story non religious building in Phily last year for what reason, I don't know?

What does this all have in common? They're like Disney, A really exciting, fun business that branches everywhere and changes direction constantly, but any investor know not to invest in them. They are too diversified.