Does the church publish a complete financial report? Do they publish a partial report? Do they tell us of their charitable donations?

No.
No.
Sort of. (They have released some information about their charitable spending at least once. Businessweek did some calculations on it and figured it made up something like 0.7% of their total income http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-07-10/how-the-mormons-make-money#p6)

In response to the US government cutting of snap benefits, a TBM responds, "Pay tithing, it benefits everyone."

Without getting political, how would you respond to this?

Everyone at the top.

Print out the above business news week article and have you both read it. Then ask if they can request a breakdown of the church's books. Members will be told they do not need to see the finances or just trust the leadership. Also, ask why would a non profit church have so many businesses. Shopping malls, cattle ranches, radio, tv, newspapers, insurance company, high scale properties in Hawaii, etc. dig into all of the business side of the church and they look like a company out to make money. Is that the message of Jesus one would ask?

Yes.

In countries where they are legally obligated, such as Canada and the UK.

The most meaningful thing from those two are the average salary of church employees It was exceptionally high in Canada, over $100k so my guess is someone is making huge money and lifted the average.

Like a corporation, they shift things to a country where they don't have to report. Canada and the UK pay big $ to fund BYU. This means that $ from places that don't have to report can be spent on other things without the need to report in the US.

Look up Double Irish with a Dutch sandwich to see how companies do it. The Church has the most financially savvy folks that money can buy and aren't going to miss a trick about shuffling $.

We have a saying where I work, "All money is green". The technical term is fungible. So money that is earmarked for one thing is acceptable, because money that would have normally been spent on that item is freed-up to be spent elsewhere. So when they say all their funds from Canada go to BYU, that frees-up money from the US that they tell the TBMs might go to BYU to go to business enterprises because the actual use of those funds are reported to no one.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/30/2013 05:38PM by jerry64.

The UK pays nothing to BYU.
For the year ending December 2012 COB had to donate back to the UK £17,000,000 because that was the shortfall between incoming donations and outgoing operating expenses.
Without the help of SLC the Church in the UK is insolvent.

Thanks Twirlnwhirl. I would love to do just that, but I'm afraid my TBM friend is a hopeless case and I would be better off just keeping my mouth shut. It's either that or lose her friendship. Since I am unlikely to convince her anyway, I'd rather not rock the boat... but, oh how I would love to!!!

Like most other things there is the possibility that it is true but not accurate.