60 Minutes Australia: "Cooking the Book of Mormon"

[Chum]

2 hours ago, bluebell said:

I completely agree with the church paying taxes.  But I wouldn't want my ward to pay more sales tax than is required by the law

Any 501(c)(3) non-profit can submit a tax-exempt form to a retailer. The retailer then won't collect sales taxes at the time of purchase.

I've never known my wards to submit one. I don't know about other wards.

[bluebell]

3 minutes ago, Chum said:

Any 501(c)(3) non-profit can submit a tax-exempt form to a retailer. The retailer then won't collect sales taxes at the time of purchase.

I've never known my wards to submit one. I don't know about other wards.

I wouldn't even know when that would be appropriate. I can't think of a time that my ward purchased anything from a retailer.

[Chum]

3 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

Where do you live?  I was assuming you live in the United States where churches are exempt from paying sales tax.

I live in the US.

Sales tax exemption isn't automatic nor is it mandatory.

[Chum]

2 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I wouldn't even know when that would be appropriate. I can't think of a time that my ward purchased anything from a retailer.

All stuff comes from somewhere. I've bought stuff for the ward, using ward checks.

Edited November 1, 2022 by Chum

[ksfisher]

7 minutes ago, Chum said:

I've never known my wards to submit one. I don't know about other wards.

A member who purchases something for his or her ward pays sales tax on it.  However, when the receipt is turned in for reimbursement the clerk fills in a field indicating how much tax was paid.  The government then reimburses the church this amount.

 

Edited November 1, 2022 by ksfisher

[bluebell]

8 minutes ago, Chum said:

All stuff comes from somewhere. I've bought stuff for the ward, using ward checks.

Ok.

[Chum]

3 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

A member who purchases something for his or her ward pays sales tax on it.  However, when the receipt is turned in for reimbursement the clerk fills in a field indicating how much tax was paid.  The government then reimburses the church this amount.

 

Okay. First time I've heard that. I haven't been a financial or ward clerk. We members were told we pay sales tax.

I've been involved in financials for other types of local 501c3 and I've never seen or heard of it being done that way.

[ksfisher]

8 minutes ago, Chum said:

We members were told we pay sales tax.

Yes, that's correct.

 

8 minutes ago, Chum said:

I've been involved in financials for other types of local 501c3 and I've never seen or heard of it being done that way.

Previously, maybe 20 years ago, sales tax was not paid on purchases by members for the church.  This could cause problems when a member bought, for example, food for the ward dinner as well as their own food on the same receipt and then didn't pay tax on either.  It was changed so no one could take advantage of the church's tax exempt status to avoid paying sales tax on their own purchases.

[Chum]

4 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

Yes, that's correct.

I guess I should have phrased that as: We members were told our ward pays sales tax on items for the ward.

[ksfisher]

1 minute ago, Chum said:

I guess I should have phrased that as: We members were told our ward pays sales tax on items for the ward.

That's true, the ward pays tax.  It is church headquarters that is reimbursed. 

[ksfisher]

35 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I wouldn't even know when that would be appropriate. I can't think of a time that my ward purchased anything from a retailer.

Office supplies, and I believe now, cleaning supplies. They're purchase online through a church account. 

[smac97]

1 hour ago, Chum said:

Sure. I've never seen a tax exempt ID used for any ward I've been in. 

But receipts turned in by members for reimbursement always segregate out the portion of the receipt paid as taxes.  It was my understanding that this is done to reclaim or otherwise account for such amounts.

Thanks,

-Smac

[bluebell]

18 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

Office supplies, and I believe now, cleaning supplies. They're purchase online through a church account. 

That makes sense. 

[Chum]

52 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

That's true, the ward pays tax.  It is church headquarters that is reimbursed. 

To clarify, the Church is reimbursed by my county for county sales taxes?

[ksfisher]

20 minutes ago, Chum said:

To clarify, the Church is reimbursed by my county for county sales taxes?

On a county level I don’t know the inner workings, but the end result is that the church recoups sales tax paid by members on its behalf. 

[Hamba Tuhan]

6 hours ago, Chum said:

I like when my ward pays sales taxes ...

My ward pays our version of sales tax, too, as does my stake, etc. We have no exemption for that here.

This issue, however, is not about the Church paying the taxes it owes. It is specifically about the Church arranging matters within the existing legal and regulatory framework so that members' charitable donations are tax deductible. I agree with @JustAnAustralian that the Australian Tax Office was probably 'involved in discussions [with the Church] as to what would be required to allow it [tithing] to be 100% deductible'.

The way the Church has arranged its financial affairs in Australia means that, currently, tithing attracts the exact same tax benefit for the member as a financial donation to a political party or candidate. Though, for some reason, I haven't seen any 60 Minutes stories about how 'dodgy' political parties are 'rorting the system' by accepting tax-deductible donations ...

Edited November 1, 2022 by Hamba Tuhan

[Hamba Tuhan]

46 minutes ago, Chum said:

To clarify, the Church is reimbursed by my county for county sales taxes?

I doubt it:

Quote

In general, Georgia statute grants no sales or use tax exemption to churches, religious, charitable, civic and other nonprofit organizations. These organizations are required to pay the tax on all purchases of tangible personal property. 

 

[Calm]

7 hours ago, Tacenda said:

 

 

I couldn't do all that you do with lack of sleep and other health problems. I admire you for the research you put it with all that you have to handle. I'm not able to do a tenth of what you and others do to find the truth in these matters. I appreciate the detective work Calm! 

It fills the hours with something much more useful than playing games, I prefer depending on distraction rather than more drugs and when it goes right, I get to feel smart too.  It’s pretty selfish, so I appreciate hearing that it is useful, even a little bit, for others too.  

[smac97]

4 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

On a county level I don’t know the inner workings, but the end result is that the church recoups sales tax paid by members on its behalf. 

It is important to understand how the law can operate in this context.  A right not exercised can be a right lost.  This is why ward clerks go to such time and effort to recoup sales tax.  If we fail to do this, we may end up losing the legal right to do this.

I am aware of a situation involving a ward in the Midwest whose bishop authorized a yard sale to be conducted in the ward building.  The county found out about it, got the ward building's tax-exempt status revoked (since it was used to conduct commercial activity - a yard sale), and spent the next several years successfully charging the Church many tens of thousands in property taxes until the Church re-acquired the property's tax-exempt status.

Thanks,

-Smac

[ksfisher]

51 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

I doubt it:

 

I believe that the page you are referencing is referring to sellers, meaning a church would need to collect and pay to the state sales tax on items it sold.  Or if it rented out space for any use it would need to collect and pay sales tax.  

Edited November 1, 2022 by ksfisher

[Calm]

In regards to the Canadian controversy…

Approval of educational organizations is not automatic, they need to apply to receive approved status.  There is an online list (linked in the link below) that shows present and past schools as approved status can be revoked.  It appears there is no official percentage required, at least not in the info provided, but this could be something easily added as policy surely if the Canadian government wanted to.  Part of the application process is identifying the Canadian students, so Canada I’d aware of the numbers.  And as I posted earlier, there are highly likely schools with lower percentages of Canadian students out there that are receiving comparable money (I am happy to admit I had a small sample size and extrapolated) and yet Canada does not appear to care about them.  And if Stormin’ Mormon’s calculations are correct, Canadian students at the BYUs are still being subsidized, just not to the extent other students are, thus Canada’s money could be said to be going completely to Canadian students at BYU, so one might say Canadian students aren’t treated as nicely at BYU by the administration, but BYU is not making money off of them.

https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publications/publications/rc191/qualified-donee-becoming-a-prescribed-university-outside-canada.html

Edited November 1, 2022 by Calm

[JustAnAustralian]

 

11 hours ago, Calm said:

Do you apply the 75% deduction yourself and if so how do you find out what organizations are only 75% and what are 100%?  And if you don’t apply the deduction, does the government calculates your taxes for you based on the info you give them or something else?

In our case, our end of financial year tax statement had wording to the effect of "75% of tithing and 100% of fast offering is deductable". But the church calculated the amount we could deduct and just gave us a number to put into our tax forms.

I'm not sure how it works with other organisations. Except for bucket donations (where you drop some coins etc into the bucket that the salvation army etc have at their appeals), organisations give you a donation receipt with how much you can claim.

[Calm]

On 10/29/2022 at 10:42 AM, Stormin' Mormon said:

Let's do some math. 

The Church has moved $1 billion out of Canada to BYU over the last 15 years, which is about $66.6 million per year.

The student body population at BYU is 31,633. If 2% of them are Canadians, then there are 633 Canadian students at the Y.

Thus, the Church is spending $105k per year in Canadian tithing dollars for each Canadian student at BYU. Is that reasonable?

We know BYU's tuition is highly subsidized. But a a school with the same ranking and similar student body population (UC-Riverside) charges $45k in tuition each year. We can therefore estimate the actual value of BYU's tuition to be about that amount with the Church kicking in an extra $39k per student.

But according to an article on urban.org, only 31% of a school's operating costs comes from tuition and other student fees. The true cost of a student's education is roughly three times the value of their tuition.

Which means, the cost of educating a BYU student is around $115k a year.

Huh. Even if some of my assumptions are off, it still puts us in the realm of the eminently reasonable.

Like I said--a huge nothingburger.

 

Edited to add: gut check lead me to the publicly available budget of the University of Arizona (close to where I live and where my daughter will likely enroll next fall). Student body population is similar to that of BYU. Annual budget is $2.1 billion. If BYU's budget is similar, then Canadian tithing dollars would represent 3% of its revenues, which is very comparable to the 2% of the student body who are from Canada. Puts us in the realm of reasonable.

It occurs to me if the donation goes to all the BYUs, the number of Canadian students will be higher and thus the contribution by donation less per student.

I need to attend to other things, but it would be nice to find out if the donation goes solely to BYU Provo or to all BYUs (if only BYU Provo, Canadian students who go to the other schools are subsidized as much as everyone else).  That should be easy enough to find, I may go do that right now by looking at the approved list (registered separately, so now need to go to the Church’s tax forms to see how donated).  Would also be nice to have all the Canadian student population numbers for all the BYUs for either comparison or calculations.

Edited November 1, 2022 by Calm

[Calm]

39 minutes ago, JustAnAustralian said:

organisations give you a donation receipt with how much you can claim.

That’s nice and handy.

[Calm]

Brain fog hit…someone have a link to the Canadian tax forms of the Church?  I am assuming they are public if the Fifth Estate searched them.  They just stated “BYU” and not “BYU Provo”.  I supposed one could use the total number of Canadian students anyway to demonstrate how Canadians students on average benefit as even at BYU it would vary depending on scholarships and such.