The Fascinating Finances of Mega Churches

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Edited By: Andrew Gonzales

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The church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints commonly known as the Mormon Church is one of the world biggest hedge funds involved in shady business deals and opaque corporate practices. Last month the Securities and Exchange Commission (an organization normally tasked with stopping insider trading and stock manipulation) fined the Mormon church 5 million dollars for a failure to report stock holdings that they had intentionally spread out over 13 different shell companies to avoid disclosing the churches investments. If it sounds ridiculous that a church would be charged for some of the same crimes as the biggest corporate frauds in history, then sit back because it get’s a lot worse.

The Mormon Church collects 10% of their members income as tithes that are tax deductible. That means if a Latter-Day Saint pays a 30% marginal rate on a one hundred thousand dollar income, they automatically give ten thousand dollars to the church every year. seven thousand dollars of that donation would have ended up in their bank account, but three thousand dollars would have gone to the IRS. That means that tight fisted Uncle Sam is effectively subsidising 30% of the church’s income.

The church is not obligated to report how much it brings in every year, but a joint analysis conducted by Reuters and University of Tampa Sociologist Ryan Cragun estimates that the number is at least seven BILLION dollars annually in tithes and other donations made by their members. Some of that money is used to fund the churches religious activities like paying salaries to priests, some of the money is spent on maintaining church facilities and some is spent on programs to help the community but the Mormon Church Consistently has a lot of money left over.

The excess money the church saves every year is funnelled into a trust which is managed by the Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The President is both the cultural and managerial leader of the church and controls the company that controls the trust that controls the churches extra money. The holding company directly owns an educational division including Bringham Young University, a think tank called the intellectual reserve and the Polynesian cultural center which is a LDS controlled tourist destination in Hawaii that was built with the intention to provide employment and scholarships to Mormon students attending the nearby Mormon owned university.


The last major asset owned by the Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is yet another holding company, that is the Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The presiding bishop is kind of like the Darth Vader if the president was Palpatine, both very powerful and wield immense authority in the church, but the bishop still answers to the president and it a little more hands on in the day-to-day affairs of the church. The holding company owned by a holding company also owns another holding company called the Deseret Management Corporation which is their private equity division. The Deseret Management Corporation owns several for-profit companies outright including beneficial financial group (which is an insurance, investment and retirement services company), Bonneville International Corporation (which owns radio station nation wide) and Utah Property Management Associates which is a real estate company that manages apartments and commercial properties.

So it’s time to learn How Money Works to find out how the finances of mega churches really work.