60 Minutes Australia: "Cooking the Book of Mormon"

[Analytics]

Apparently, the Australian version of 60 Minutes is doing a story about how the Church is aggressively (fraudulently?) avoiding taxes on its for-profit businesses (or something. I don't know what the specific allegations are). Is this real? Does anybody know anything about this?

 

[CV75]

There's a chapter about arresting a chef, the episode is known as "Booking the Cook of Mormon."

Edited October 27, 2022 by CV75

[OGHoosier]

3 minutes ago, CV75 said:

There's a chapter about arresting a chef, the episode is known as "Booking the Cook of Mormon."

Wait, for real?

[smac97]

This isn't the only effort.  Seems like someone is trying to stir the pot in Canada as well: Mormon Church in Canada moved $1B out of the country tax free — and it's legal

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As a chartered professional accountant, part of Nigel Kennett's job is financial audits. 

While reviewing the books of a religious organization, the Edmonton resident decided to take a look at the finances of his own church, using the website of the Canada Revenue Agency.

He typed "the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" into the search box, and checked the first hit. 

"I was floored," he said.

That year alone, he saw on the website, the LDS church sent almost $100 million to its Brigham Young University in the United States. 

Donations to educational institutions are generally considered charitable gifts, akin to donating to a church, a soup kitchen, an clean water NGO, whatever.

You wouldn't know that given the Oh-My-Stars-and-Garters! tone of the article.

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The majority of that money came from tithing — or the 10 per cent of gross annual income some 200,000 Canadian Mormons like Kennett and his wife contribute to the church annually.

In fact, in the last 15 years, the LDS church in Canada has moved more than $1 billion across the border to Brigham Young universities in the U.S., an investigation by CBC's The Fifth Estate has found.

The Fifth Estate is an investigative documentary series that airs in Canada.

They won't be the first outfit to try to rake some muck about the Church, without much to show for it in the end.  I suspect that is how this story will end up.

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Nigel Kennett, a Mormon and an accountant from Alberta, reached out to The Fifth Estate after he found out how his church is spending its tithing money. (CBC)

 

If members of the church such as Kennett were surprised to see how donated money was used, so, too, might Canadian taxpayers. According to tax experts consulted by The Fifth Estate, the church's tax-free status meant the move may have cost the Canadian treasury as much as  $280 million.

It's perfectly legal for the church to send money to BYU.

Oh.  It's legal.  So the point of the article is . . . what?

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According to the tax experts consulted by The Fifth Estate, the money sent to BYU costs other Canadian taxpayers anywhere between 16 to 28 cents for every dollar donated.

Gotta love how this is framed.  Imagine them saying something like "the money sent to The Little Sisters of Mercy Soup Kitchen costs other Canadian taxpayers anywhere between 16 to 28 cents for every dollar donated."  Where are the pitchforks?!

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"The tax provision administered by the Canada Revenue Agency is both legitimate and well-known," a church spokesperson said in a statement to The Fifth Estate. 

In a response to The Fifth Estate, the CRA said organizations that choose to register as charities are required to follow a particular set of rules listed  in the Income Tax Act. 

"The Canada Revenue Agency ensures only eligible organizations qualify for registration and that charities devote all of their resources to charitable activities. To the extent that a charity is found to be devoting its resources to activities that are illegal, non-charitable or contrary to the requirements of the Income Tax Act, it can have its registration revoked," a CRA official said. 

The Church is complying with Canadian law, with nary a hint that it is coloring outside the lines.  And yet these guys still ran the story.

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The Fifth Estate collected financial reports the church submitted to CRA since 2000. The documents show that LDS in Canada started moving money across the border to BYU in 2007 by sending them $50 million. Then, in 2009, it sent another $40 million, then almost $103 million in 2010 and $100 million in 2011, all the way to last year, when it sent $93.6 million. In all, the money sent by LDS to the U.S. in that time period totals more than $1 billion. 

The Fifth Estate also collected the list from CRA of the money Canadian charities have sent to all foreign universities in the same 15 years. 

Comparing the data, BYU got approximately the same amount of money from Canada as eight Ivy League universities combined — that's Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Pennsylvania and Yale all together.

Okay.  How is this newsworthy?

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Jaclyn Foster, a former BYU student from Canada, questions how it is possible to move money from Canada to the school. (CBC)

"Jaclyn Foster" sounded familiar.  Sure enough, she's the same charming person we discussed back in 2019:

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Jaclyn Foster, who previously attended BYU and is now apparently a doctoral student in history at the University of Utah, was a 2018 “Summer Fellow” of the Maxwell Institute, where her work resulted in a paper and a presentation entitled “The Influence of Scientific Racism on Mormon Racial Thought.”  A few days ago she had this lovely thing to say:

"Best case scenario for Mormonism is Nelson and Oaks dying simultaneously in a car crash tbh {to be honest}."

Per her Facebook profile, she served as a missionary in 2013:

And married in the temple in 2015:

And yet somehow, by 2019, she is publicly wishing for the violent and bloody deaths of Pres. Nelson and Pres. Oaks.

To her (kinda sorta) credit, she did subsequently publish a kinda-sorta-non-apologetic apology:

"How it could be construed?"  "Not my intent?"  How many ways does this insult the intelligence of her readers?

So apparently her position is that she still wants Pres. Nelson and Pres. Oaks to die, but perhaps just not in a car crash.  

(Oh, and if her wish is fulfilled and Pres. Nelson and Pres. Oaks are killed, then the "next in line" is Elder Ballard, not Elder Holland.)

I think the following response (from the above link) is apt:

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It might surprise Jaclyn (apparently a PhD candiate[!!!!]) that wishing someone will die in a car crash is actively wishing harm on that person. It is like saying "I hope someone punches you in the face" and then saying, "But hey, I don't wish any physical harm to you!"

Well, yeah.

Man.  I thought Canadians were supposed to be nice...  

Also, I can't help but notice that Jaclyn is whinging about donations to BYU, but only after having been the beneficiary of a subsidized education at BYU.

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The LDS church expects members to pay regular tithing to gain access to the saving rituals of a Mormon temple. 

The LDS Church asks all members to tithe, not just those with TRs.

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According to the church, tithing funds are used "among other things, to build temples and meetinghouses, support family history research, share the gospel with others and provide humanitarian service."

That's what Kennett was expecting the church to do with his donations. 

He was not aware that the "among other things" includes subsidizing educational institutions?

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Knowing how much of that money went to BYU, he is angry, given that when members of the church like him and his wife pay their tithing, they receive a tax credit. 

"The church is taking away governments' ability to fund health care, the ability to fund education, the ability to provide other essential services," Kennet said. "It's done little to benefit the people here and it has done everything … to fill the coffers in Salt Lake." 

Oh, brother.  The Church is doing nothing of the sort.  It is complying with the law.  It is using tithes for their lawful and intended purposes, which include subsidizing education.

By this fellow's reasoning, every dollar not taxed by the government of Canada is "taking away governments' ability to fund health care, the ability to fund education, the ability to provide other essential services."  So he must also object to, say, Canadians donating to other schools?  Or to NGOs and other nonprofits?  

Or is this one of those "it's only wrong when the Latter-day Saints and their Church do it" kind of things?

As for the "fill the coffers in Salt Lake" bit, two useful resources:

• Historian digs into the hidden world of Mormon finances, shows how church went from losing money to making money — lots of it (2017 SL Tribune article summarizing D. Michael Quinn's extensive scrutiny of the Church's finances, which he summed up as being "an enormously faith-promoting story," and also stating that "{i}f everyday Mormons could grasp 'the larger picture,' ... they would 'breathe a sigh of relief and see the church is not a profit-making business,'" and that the leaders of the Church - who in 2017 were all given a uniform "living allowance" of $120,000 - "are clearly not in it to get rich").
• Records reveal how money from Utah and U.S. Mormons props up LDS operations overseas (2017 SL Tribune article explaining how the Church heavily subsidizes its infrastructure in most countries outside the United States - including Canada).

Nobody is getting rich from "the coffers in Salt Lake."

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Kennett said he always thought tithing was a good thing because charities are doing good work for communities. He doesn't think that way anymore. 

"I understand that if I was to donate to the University of Alberta, that I would get a donation tax credit for that because it eases the strain of the federal and provincial governments for funding those institutions.  But $100 million going towards BYU doesn't do anything to alleviate the financial strain of provincial and federal governments in Canada," he said. 

So he's okay with donations to educational institutions, but only if they are in Canada?

Meanwhile, the article also discusses various other American schools who have received donations from Canadians, including Harvard (endowment: $53 billion), Stanford (endowment: $37 billion), Brown (endowment: $7 billion), Columbia (endowment: $14 billion), Cornell (endowment: $10 billion), Dartmouth (endowment: $8 billion), Princeton (endowment: $37 billion), Pennsylvania (endowment: $20 billion), Yale (endowment: $42 billion), Berkeley (endowment: $6.8 billion), Loma Linda University ($461 million), Yeshiva University (endowment: $814 million).

No mention of this guy getting all hot and bothered by Canadian dollars being donated to these institutions, which dollars also "{don't} do anything to alleviate the financial strain of provincial and federal governments in Canada."

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Kate Bahen, managing director of Charity Intelligence Canada, a non-profit watchdog organization, said that as a charity, LDS Canada "enjoys many benefits, it gets to operate tax free."

Nice and vague, this.  

Here's a list of financial reports from LDS Canada.  The "expenses" shown for 2016 are "Charitable program{s}" (50%) and "Gifts to other registered charities and qualified donees" (50%).  It has 160 full-time and 122 part-time employees.  Compensation for employees ranges from $80,000.00 to $160,000.00.

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For one Canadian who studied at BYU, the move of Canadian money to support its schools in the U.S. raises questions because of the institution's history with LGBTQ students.

"I encountered so many people who said, 'Oh we love queer people, they just can't act on it,' and they seemed to see me just openly identifying as queer as a form of acting on it. And I realized they wouldn't ever fully accept me unless I stayed silent," said Jaclyn Foster, a Calgary-born former BYU student who finished her bachelor of science in genetics, genomics and biotechnology studies in 2018.

The LDS church considers homosexual activity "a serious sin," and the university has an honour code that requires "abstaining from any sexual relations outside a marriage between a man and a woman." 

In 2018, a Canada university with similar policies around LGBTQ students was denied accreditation for its proposed law school. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled its code of conduct is discriminatory.

Boy, they're really stretching to fit this aside into the story.

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Breaking the honour code at BYU can have serious consequences, especially for international students.

"You don't just get kicked out from school. You lose your housing. If you have a job on campus, you lose your job, which if you're a Canadian, you could only work on campus. You lose your student visa and have to go home," Foster said. 

She questions how it is possible to move money from Canada to such a university.

"What is it about the Canadian tax code that makes … BYU acceptable?" 

If and when Jaclyn repays the subsidized portion of her BYU tuition, I'll give her pronouncements some consideration.  Until then...

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In a written statement, the church said its universities "have students from Canada currently enrolled and have had thousands of students attend these institutions between 2007 and 2021."

While acknowledging donations made by members were transferred to three Brigham Young universities, the church said "more donations were retained and used in Canada." 

According to The Fifth Estate research, in the same period, 46 per cent of tithing money left Canada for the U.S.

Again, not much dirt here.

Here's the part that may tie in to the article in the OP about Australia:

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The findings by The Fifth Estate are adding to financial questions the LDS church is facing globally.

There are calls from former members of the church, as well as political leaders, for a tax investigation in Australia, where questions have been raised about whether the church has been doing widescale tax avoidance or tax evasion by running its activities through what appears to be a shell company that had no paid employees.

One of the loudest voices for a tax investigation was former opposition politician Andrew Leigh, who is now Australia's charity minister.

Although he couldn't confirm there's an ongoing investigation into the church's activities because it would be done at arm's length from the government, Leigh told The Fifth Estate "it's important that everyone is playing by the rules."

Yes, it is.

And so far there is no indication - apart from Mr. Leigh's insinuation - that the Church is not "playing by the rules."

There is also no indication of an actual "investigation" of the Church, just "calls" for one.  So how is this newsworthy?

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"Charity shouldn't be a way of sheltering yourself from appropriate tax payments." 

What a boneheaded remark this is.  A lawful charitable donation is, by law, not subject to "appropriate tax payments."

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In a statement, the Mormon Church insisted it has not violated any tax laws in Australia. 

"Donations [are] used for overseas aid projects that satisfy Australia charities and tax rules," the church said. 

And again, there is no indication that the Church is not complying with "Australia charities and tax rules."  So why is this newsworthy?

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In the United States in 2019, two Mormon brothers filed a whistleblower complaint to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service that the church used part of tithing money to amass about $100 billion US in accounts intended for charitable purposes through its investment arm Ensign Peak Advisors. 

"You have billions of dollars in Apple and fossil fuel-burning companies and energy companies … that rattled people, and then the lack of activity in doing something that that money is designed to be used for," Lars Nielsen, one of the two brothers, told The Fifth Estate. 

LOL.  Lars is so eager to disparage the Church that he has to resort to characterize the Church's stock portfolio as involving "fossil fuel-burning companies."  Oh, the depravity!

Meanwhile, does Lars drive a car?  Does he heat his home with natural gas?  Do his house, household items, car, clothes, etc. include any plastics or other oil-derived materials (or do their production and distribution involve the use of fossil fuels)?  Does he eat buy and eat food in plastic packaging?  Is any of that food planted, grown, harvested, and transported to him using fossil fuels?  Does he transact with any businesses which use fossil fuels?  

Just trying to figure out the rules, Lars.  Is working with "fossil fuel-burning companies" bad when you do it, too?  Or again, is this one of those "it's only wrong when the Latter-day Saints and their Church do it" kind of things?

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The IRS didn't want to confirm or deny if there is an investigation into the church activities. 

"Didn't want to confirm or deny."

Yeesh.

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"Ensign Peak works daily with the church's treasury department to ensure the church's financial needs are met. Such needs include providing humanitarian assistance," the church said. 

Sounds like pretty mundane stuff.  So why is this newsworthy?

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Before Kennett reached out to The Fifth Estate with what he discovered when he looked into his church's finances, he tried to talk about these issues with members, reaching out to his bishop, he said.

"He just shrugged his shoulders and was like, 'Well, the Lord commands and so we obey.'" 

Although Kennett and his family are not practicing anymore, he is still a member of the church. He said his family ties to Mormonism go too deep for him to break them. 

Publicly disparaging the Church for doing nothing unusual or unlawful is hunky dory, I guess.

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But he knows this might change after his interview with The Fifth Estate. 

"If the church considers someone to have broken ... covenants or to have spoken ill, they will excommunicate that individual." 

Kennett said he's at peace with that. 

He'll need to work a lot harder if he wants to lose his membership in the Church, which these days is a frustratingly patient and tolerant lot (frustrating, that is, for those folks for who value their membership so little that losing it is a badge of pride).

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited October 27, 2022 by smac97

[JustAnAustralian]

Pretty sure it'll just be a re-hash of this https://www.smh.com.au/national/mormons-inc-church-accused-of-multinational-tax-rort-20220330-p5a98p.html

[Hamba Tuhan]

My understanding -- which could be wrong -- is that Australia's tax office previously only recognised 75 per cent of what the Church does with local tithing in Australia as 'charitable activity' and therefore income-tax deductible. In order to change that to 100 per cent, the Church now uses that 25 per cent of Australian contributions (or maybe all?) for registered charitable activities. This is possible to do because Church HQ can easily keep the Australian Church operating regardless of what local tithes are used for.

The person at the end of the clip is Andrew Leigh, Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury in the newly elected Labor government, who had promised to look into this before the last federal election. My guess is that he's going to point out that, having looked into it, this is all 100 per cent legal.

Celebrity apostate Simon Southerton and a few of his newly minted groupies seem to be driving this narrative as a 'novel' approach to taking the Church down. From what I can tell, their 'exposé' in the Sydney Morning Herald and associated papers earlier this year fizzled, so they've moved on to television.

ETA: I realised I have no clue as to the reputation of Australia's 60 Minutes. I found a couple of threads on Reddit. Here are the OPs and some top-rated comments:

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Why does everyone hate 60 Minutes Australia? American here. I enjoy the program, but it seems to have a lot of haters who think it's unreliable tabloid trash. Why?

• Or to paraphrase, it is unreliable tabloid trash.
• I think it always had problematic stories and did some sensationalism but nowadays its really off the charts.

 

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60 min Australia vs 60 minutes USA. Non Aussie here - Is it me or is the Aussie version infinitely trashier and more sensationalist?

• Yeah it's basically a tabloid show.
• You are correct, the Aussie version focuses on things like dogs with two heads, outlandish 3rd-world medical practices, and other "freak show" style topics.

 

Edited October 28, 2022 by Hamba Tuhan

[blackstrap]

I had a conversation with my Stake president  years ago in which he said that from time to time there would be a meeting of Stake Presidents with Church agents from the USA. At this meeting they had to vote to release funds that would go to the US  or elsewhere because the Stake Presidents were like corporate board members for the Canadian church. Don't know if this is still true .

What I do know is that 1 billion dollars in the hands of the government will disappear down a rabbit  hole to useless projects in the blink of an eye.

[The Nehor]

It is legal BUT SINISTER AND UNFAIR AND IMMORAL AND IS STARVING TINY TIM!

Wouldn’t the logical response then be to, and I am am just spitballing here, amend the tax laws?

8 hours ago, blackstrap said:

What I do know is that 1 billion dollars in the hands of the government will disappear down a rabbit  hole to useless projects in the blink of an eye.

Unless it goes to DARPA and then it goes to both useful and useless projects that are all so awesome that who cares if it is a waste? What I am saying is that we should give DARPA more money so that mad scientists can do their thing.

Edited October 28, 2022 by The Nehor

[PeaceKeeper]

Any donations TO the church BELONG to the church. It does not matter what any specific person or member or group wants to do with those donations. It matters only what the church wants to do. When I freely buy a burger at In-n-Out, I do not then have the right to demand, because they took my money, that they start to sell tacos, or knit sweaters, or give dental to their employees. I have nothing to do with it. The fact is that the church is the best run organization in the world, and it drives the haters and jealous socialists of the world crazy because they cannot control the investments, spendings or savings of the church. 

 

As the church grows, opposition will grow with it.

[Hamba Tuhan]

58 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Wouldn’t the logical response then be to, and I am am just spitballing here, amend the tax laws?

That's certainly one option, but amending the tax laws so that an organisation can no longer use donations on overseas humanitarian projects in order to provide a tax benefit to its members seems a bit spiteful.

So yeah, probably the exact 'fix' these people want!

Edited October 28, 2022 by Hamba Tuhan

[Duncan]

They had a Canadian version of this, something like The Book of the Mormons and now i'm getting emailed on FB from people who haven't been to Church in YEARS saying how upset they are about the Church

[Chum]

4 hours ago, CV75 said:

There's a chapter about arresting a chef, the episode is known as "Booking the Cook of Mormon."

That title absolves all sin.

[Maestrophil]

Ha!  The sinister music and dramatic VO - such DRAMA!  😛

 

[jkwilliams]

13 hours ago, PeaceKeeper said:

Any donations TO the church BELONG to the church. It does not matter what any specific person or member or group wants to do with those donations. It matters only what the church wants to do. When I freely buy a burger at In-n-Out, I do not then have the right to demand, because they took my money, that they start to sell tacos, or knit sweaters, or give dental to their employees. I have nothing to do with it. The fact is that the church is the best run organization in the world, and it drives the haters and jealous socialists of the world crazy because they cannot control the investments, spendings or savings of the church. 

 

As the church grows, opposition will grow with it.

The best charitable organizations are transparent in how they spend their money. It's not analogous to In-N-Out. Dang, I wish I was back home in California. A Double-Double sounds good about now.

[carbon dioxide]

1 hour ago, jkwilliams said:

The best charitable organizations are transparent in how they spend their money.

Maybe so but I think there are generally two groups of people.  One group is the people who are fine with what the church does with the funds and do not require or demand a high level of transparency from the church.  The other are those who really want transparency and then if the church was transparent, they would spend their time nit picking and complain of how and where the church spends its money.  They are a group of people that generally are not going to be happy either way.   There are of course those that may not fit in either group but they are exceptions.   So what does the church do?  Make an attempt to appease a group of people that will never be happy?   What is the point?

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, carbon dioxide said:

Maybe so but I think there are generally two groups of people.  One group is the people who are fine with what the church does with the funds and do not require or demand a high level of transparency from the church.  The other are those who really want transparency and then if the church was transparent, they would spend their time nit picking and complain of how and where the church spends its money.  They are a group of people that generally are not going to be happy either way.   There are of course those that may not fit in either group but they are exceptions.   So what does the church do?  Make an attempt to appease a group of people that will never be happy?   What is the point?

I don't really care what the church does with its money, but I do understand why some members would like transparency. From my understanding, they stopped publishing their expenses in 1959 out of embarrassment for a rather large deficit ($8 million) between income and spending. Joseph F. Smith had started the financial disclosure in 1915, saying he was “taking a liberty that has not been indulged in very much: but there have been so many false charges made against me and against my brethren by ignorant and evilly disposed people, that I propose to make a true statement which will, I believe, at least have a tendency to convince you that we are trying to do our duty the best we know how.” If it were me, and it isn't, I'd err on the side of disclosure. But I have never demanded it nor said that the lack of disclosure suggests something shady. I gave a lot of money over the years to the church, and truthfully, I wish I could get it back, but you know, live and learn. 

[bluebell]

29 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

The best charitable organizations are transparent in how they spend their money. It's not analogous to In-N-Out. Dang, I wish I was back home in California. A Double-Double sounds good about now.

Off topic but they have these in Utah and their burgers are not that good.  I totally do not get the fatuation with In-n-Out. 

 

 

 

[jkwilliams]

4 minutes ago, bluebell said:

Off topic but they have these in Utah and their burgers are not that good.  I totally do not get the fatuation with In-n-Out. 

 

 

 

For me, it's mostly nostalgia. Saturday nights when I was growing up were all the same: a stake dance followed by a late-night visit to In-N-Out. My son-in-law, who is from Virginia, wasn't impressed the first time he ate there, but now he always goes there when he's in Utah or California. My dad is an addict. After his triple-bypass surgery, he had my brother take him through the drive-thru at In-N-Out on the way home from the hospital. I'm heretical in my family, but I prefer Shake Shack or Five Guys. But then, I usually go to In-N-Out when I go home, as we don't have them here in Ohio. 

Edited October 28, 2022 by jkwilliams

[bluebell]

1 minute ago, jkwilliams said:

For me, it's mostly nostalgia. Saturday nights when I was growing up were all the same: a stake dance followed by a late-night visit to In-N-Out. My son-in-law, who is from Virginia, wasn't impressed the first time he ate there, but now he always goes there when he's in Utah or California. My dad is an addict. After his triple-bypass surgery, he had my brother take him through the drive-thru at In-N-Out on the way home from the hospital. I'm heretical in my family, but I prefer Shake Shack or Five Guys. But then, I usually go to In-N-Out when I go home, as we don't have them here in Ohio. 

Five Guys is much better, but you are going to pay for it.  The last time we took my family of seven there (and two of those were little kids!).  It cost us $100.

[jkwilliams]

Just now, bluebell said:

Five Guys is much better, but you are going to pay for it.  The last time we took my family of seven there (and two of those were little kids!).  It cost us $100.

It's not cheap, but it is kind of fun when we go there and my wife tells me she knows the farmers who provided the potatoes. Everyone here loves Cincinnati-style chili (usually served over spaghetti with a pile of shredded cheddar on top). Meh. It's not awful, but it's not something I'd pay for twice.

[Tacenda]

This popped up on youtube, maybe it's already been shared here. 

 

[smac97]

https://www.smh.com.au/national/mormon-church-invests-billions-of-dollars-while-grossly-overstating-its-charitable-giving-20220927-p5blbc.html

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Mormon church invests billions of dollars while grossly overstating its charitable giving

The church has amassed more than $100 billion in a tax-free fund that invests in multinational companies, as a former member describes it as a ‘business dabbling in religion’.

ByBen Schneiders, Tom Steinfort and Natalie Clancy

OCTOBER 29, 2022

Big and splashy!

Thanks,

-Smac

[JustAnAustralian]

Again with the claim that Ensign Peak has 100B. Are reporters ever going to look at the actual number (closer to 42B last June according to the Salt Lake Tribune https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2022/08/29/lds-church-loses-billions-more/ )?

[california boy]

We have had quite a few threads about some BYU students staying at BYU to finish their education even though they no longer have any belief in the Church and plan to leave the Church once they graduate.  TBM's have complained that those students were inappropriately using tithing money to help pay for their education.  Turns out no tithing money is used to support BYU.  Billions goes to BYU from a tax write off from Australia and Canada.  If the Church didn't funnel the money to BYU, it would have gone to taxes.  

You can't complain about students gaming the system when the Church also games the system.

[Tacenda]

26 minutes ago, JustAnAustralian said:

Again with the claim that Ensign Peak has 100B. Are reporters ever going to look at the actual number (closer to 42B last June according to the Salt Lake Tribune https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2022/08/29/lds-church-loses-billions-more/ )?

I wonder if it's in another account somewhere.