I was thinking the other day, and have this observation regarding tithing.

So the church expects you to pay 10% on your Gross. So if you are a good TBM, and do that your entire life, and at the same time you fund a 401K, pay your taxes, etc.

So then you retire, you have already paid 10% on your 401K and you have already paid 10% on your Social Security and Medicare. Granted there will be some gains in that 401K, but the church made up for that in their 100 Billion Fund by the excess you gave them that is daily earning interest, dividends, and capital gains. So lets just say you are equal.

But they expect you to pay them 10% on funds that you already paid tithing on, so is it ethical? Especially for those who's only source of income is SS, which does not even cover the cost of living.

I would see it no different that giving that scammer on the phone 10% of your bank account every time they call.

A good bishop would leave retired people alone, but might check on monthly/occasional fast offerings.

I had a mission president who demanded that we donate 12.50 or 13 dollars on our monthly missionary subsidies. And we had to show him our donated fast offerings or face further discipline.

I have read multiple stories of people tithing, willingly or unwillingly, on retirement, Social Security, student loans, welfare and on the value of gifts.
Then, of course, there's the infamous RMN quote: “We preach tithing to the poor people of the world because the poor people of the world have had cycles of poverty, generation after generation. That same poverty continues from generation to another, until people pay their tithing.”

And the granddaddy of them all, that quote from a bishop in Central America: "If paying tithing means that you can’t pay for water or electricity, pay tithing. If paying tithing means that you can’t pay your rent, pay tithing. Even if paying tithing means that you don’t have enough money to feed your family, pay tithing. The Lord will not abandon you.”

I think the granddaddy would be the same concept, but officially spoken in a General Conference address.

Lynn Robbins in 2005:

"One of the first things a bishop must do to help the needy is ask them to pay their tithing. Like the widow, if a destitute family is faced with the decision of paying their tithing or eating, they should pay their tithing. The bishop can help them with their food and other basic needs until they become self-reliant."

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2005/05/tithing-a-commandment-even-for-the-destitute?lang=eng

So the fictitious parable of the Widow's Mite strikes again!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/12/2022 06:26PM by blindguy.

Not to mention a settlement or court award from an auto or other accident!

One of the weirdest things I ever heard was that if you collect damages for an insured loss (house, car, business) ....

'You're cheating if U don't use the $$$ to repair the damages.

Right.

Shouldn't the church pay you money after you retire if you paid tithing rather than putting it into your 401K?

I ran into this sort of thing many years ago when we got our tax refund. I figgered that since I had paid tithing on gross and the government was simply returning my own tithed money, it didn't need to be tithed on again.

Wife disagreed and said, "did you have this money yesterday?" I said no. Then, "since you have it now, it is an increase and should be tithed on."

I caved since it wasn't worth the price to win this disagreement. But it has stuck in my craw ever since.

Sunbeep:

I'm sorta glad your marriage / relationship means a lot to you, but----

your wife isn't using reasoning, it's purely indoctrination/intimidation; I would call this not-very-short of bullying...


Once Morbots & other religious ppl are on that circuit (frmr electrician me) is there any off-ramp? I'm afraid not.

I agree with you that this is purely a indoctrination and intimidation. A thing that true blue mormons abide by.

Just to clarify, this was back in the day. My wife passed away 12 years ago. But it still resonates with me today.

My wife tried the same logic on me.

I told her the money was tithed when we earned it and the government was simply holding it for us.

The I changed my withholdings so we owed about $100.00 each year. Never had to worry about her wanting to give refund money again.

That's one way from being PW'd.

I've been begging my mom, who is on a fixed income after my dad passed last year, to stop paying "tithing" on her SS checks, using similar logic.

I even explained to her the concept that really flushes this whole conversation down the toilet... that the real law of tithing is not and never has been 10% of inCOME. It is 10% of inCREASE, which essentially means it's 10% of year-over-year net worth gains. If you had a net worth last year of $300k, and this year you're worth $320k, tithing would be 10% of $20k, or $2k. If you were at 300, had some losses, and now you're at 280, or maybe you're still at 300, tithing, strictly speaking, would be $0.00, regardless how much gross, net, or even disposable inCOME you made.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/11/2022 07:02PM by skp.

I was able to sit down with my elderly aunt and usi g the resour es on the social security website show her how much she paid into the system

She said she had paid tithing on all she had sent in.

So I told her it was like having a savings account but the government was the bank.

It finally dawned on her what she was doing and she stopped paying tithing on her benefits though she is keeping tabs and said she'd start again when she'd withdrawn all her "savings" and was living on the "interest"

That's a good angle.

My mom keeps going back to the "do you want net blessings or gross blessings?" thing and says the same idea applies here.

Maybe I need to point out the slippery slope... "well, maybe you should give it all to the $100B slush fund and live a penniless beggar for the rest of your life... after all, would you rather have tithing blessings or everything blessings?"

If it's true that blessings are rewarded to the faithful tithe payers in the next life, what exactly are the rewards? A bigger mansion? Extra wives? More stuff? More happiness? More blessings? What exactly? What type of blessings are needed in a place where no one is sick, hungry, mentally ill, cold, tired, etc? What are people in need of in heaven?

The Mormon church preys on members' imaginations. Fear of missing out of whatever it is they'll miss out on if they don't pay every penny of what LDS Inc. thinks it's entitled to. Members don't know exactly what it is they're missing out on in the next life but they don't want to miss out.

There is the mind fuck that so many are susceptible to... Can you afford not to pay tithing? The implication is that the church wants it however it can convince or guilt or manipulate the faithful into paying it. The answer is yes, you can afford not to pay it. If there is any thing tithing does to a person, the giving away of a chunk of your money causes the payer to think about how to better manage the 90%. God has probably statistically realized that 10% is a significant chunk of money, but not so much that it would break most people. God is good with numbers.

It's not just 10 percent.

There's fast offerings and missionary charges.

Plus all the out of pocket expenses for extra activities such as temple trips and youth outings.

The sad thing is that the church would run just fine if everyone paid just 1-2% of their income. And if truth be told, the church could probably run just fine off of the interest/gains on the trust fund alone.

From what I've read in the past, most American Christians donate 1-3% of their income. And normally about 50% of a given church's budget goes towards salaries (ministers, assistant ministers, church secretaries, organists, cleaners, etc.,) which the Mormons for the most part do not need to pay. Most churches also set aside at least 5-10% of their budgets for charity work.

In my opinion, Mormons hand off far too much money to their church. And the church does not publish budgets, and is in no way accountable for its spending.

Ordinary people, but especially the elderly and disabled, are misused terribly by the unnecessary financial demands of the church. And I think the problem will only grow worse, since it is increasingly difficult for younger people to save for retirement.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/16/2022 12:31PM by summer.

The whole net versus gross income conversation is absurd. It only makes sense (and even then, not much sense) for employees whose income is in the form of a paycheck.

If you have a business, you have business expenses, and depending on the business, it is possible, and in some fields likely that your net income (gross income minus expenses) is less than 10% of your gross income, so paying 10% of your gross income would amount to more than all of your net income for the year. Grocery stores, for example, typically make about 3% profit on their gross income. Paying 10% of gross would bankrupt pretty much every grocery store out there. I believe both the Albertson and Smith family who founded the grocery chains in Utah/Idaho are LDS. They sure as hell didn't pay on gross income. Neither did the Marriotts.

Everybody, even the minions of LDS Inc understand this, so people with private businesses get to deduct all their business expenses when figuring tithing. They get a sweet tithing deal, compared to wage earners.

Even as a TBM, it seemed reasonable to me to calculate tithing on taxable income, not even on adjusted gross income, and certainly not on absolute gross income. I considered arguments about "gross blessing versus net blessings" just emotional manipulation bordering on extortion.

I’ve heard that if you don’t pay tithing on gross income, ghawd makes you need glasses!

I think what they mean when they talk about "net vs gross" is really "after taxes or before". It's just imprecise language.

I mean, it's all completely bs because scripturally it's 10% of inCREASE (net worth gains), not inCOME. The scriptural version of tithing is vastly more reasonable and palatable than Mormonism's version... but they REALLY don't want to talk about that!

"I considered arguments about "gross blessing versus net blessings" just emotional manipulation bordering on extortion."
AMEN.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/18/2022 01:38PM by skp.

So, under the theory of paying tithing on your increased net worth rather than your income, you would owe 10% of the increased value of your home each year. Due to the recent escalation of real estate prices, that would put most homeowners in a big hole. Theoretically they would have to come up with that money each year,( 10% of the increased value of their home and their stock portfolio.) Either way, it seems as though it should be up to the individual. in actuality it is up to the individual. I suppose most of us don’t choose to make that choice.

Haha I guess now I'm the one using imprecise language. You're right, that would get hairy. The only way tithing on net worth gains really could work is if it's actually tithing on *realized* net worth gains.

Yeah, it's up to the individual in the end, but all of the coercion individuals catch along the way kind of attenuates that a bit.

I’ve heard some entrepreneurs say that they pay tithing on their business revenue so that their business will receive blessings also; when $ is withdrawn, do they ‘double pay’?

I doubt many entrepreneurs pay tithing on business expenses!

Exactly right.

Person one: Make 100,000 a year, get to write off zero expenses, pay 40,000 in taxes and 10,000 in tithing.

Person two: form a limited liability company, earn 100,0000, deduct 70,000 in expenses, pass the 30,000 to self as income, pay about $5,000 in taxes and 3,000 in tithing.

That's a vast simplification, of course, but the principle works. Mitt Romney's published taxes were about 11% on his "income" and zero on the much larger and fully sheltered income, evidence that. But in his limited financial disclosures, Trump often paid zero and Warren Buffett reportedly paid about 1% last year.

As Helmsley said, and Trump has often paraphrased, income taxes are for the little people.