My apologies if this has already bee hashed out here, but in case it hasn't, I thought I'd share.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=541838065847529&set=a.127845977246742.15344.122696771094996&type=1&ref=nf

Isn't it a gem? Of course, there's no comment about how most of the pictures represent things that _other_ donations are used for in addition to tithing.

Of course the majority of Americans have an effective tax rate of much less than 10%.

It would be kind of funny to do a more realistic one of these.

Show city creek mall, Tommy driving his nice care, temples only 3-4 people in a session, members cleaning bathrooms...

Upper left-hand corner of photo: The mormons own a giant hospital ship??

That's the USNHS Comfort. Go Navy!

It's much more then ten percent when you count all the free labor that Mormons give the church.

On the other hand, even with free labor, the church as an army of how many missionaries? It was 50,000 before their little surge, but even now I don't see it cracking a hundred thousand in God's army.

The US Military houses, feeds, pays, medicates a half million full time service members, can move the bulk of them across the world in a matter of months, and can bring down almost any country in the world the moment it wants to. Let's see Mormonism do that.

Also, right now, almost half the country is on food stamps, America feeds untold millions of starving people overseas, and can feed entire American cities after a natural disaster. Mormonism doesn't come close with its members.

I don't believe the church does almost anything charitable with tithing dollars. They build temples (not charitable) pay tons of expenses for GA, mission presidents, etc (not charitable) Pays workers at the COB (not charitable) Funds PR programs, publishes material like the BOM and lesson manuals (not charitable), invests in for profit business ventures (not charitable), builds ward houses (call this slightly charitable. If there is a disaster they let people stay in the gym for a while). Build and run the MTC's (not charitable) and so on.
Most of what they give to humanitarian causes (and it isnt much) comes either from donations to DI or through donations directly to their humanitarian fund. Most of what they give to feed and support struggling members comes from fast offerings which is a seperate fund. Also, with items like the bishops store houses all the food comes from church owned farms that are largely ran with volunteer labor (I had to do a week of service at one as a teen) canning is done by volunteers plus to get support you often have to be a TBM AND paying tithing. If they give me $500 in food but then take $300 in tithing they DID NOT give me $500, they gave me $200. Thats a big difference!

It looks like the only charity they do is the volunteer work. The rest is PR..

I don't get it. What is in those pictures that is in any way different from what the government does? Maybe I'm dense, but this is completely lost on me.

Well, come to think of it, your tax dollars aren't being used to build temples.

Mormons have drones?

Microsoft employees donated over 100 million again this year, plus volunteer time. There are considerably more Mormons (supposedly), but the church only gives about 100 million a year to humanitarian causes according to their Provident Living site.

I think Walmart beats MS by quite a margin, and of course Gates and his rich friends wallop them all.

The Average American pays maybe 25-28% in ALL taxes (federal, state, local)
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/30/us/tax-burden.html

Where does this money go...

-Universal Education for kids from 5-18
-Preschool and College Grants and Loans
-Building and maintaining 4 million miles of highways and streets
-Basic Living expenses for everyone over 65
-Medical Care for everyone over 65
-Hundreds of orbiting satellites to predict weather and potentially life threatening storms...
-Airports, telephone infrastructure, electrical infrastructure for rural communities.
-Subsidies for farmers which reduce the price of many food product, on average 600 calories of food per american per day free or charge (not that most of us need it!)
-Millions of acres of federal land for recreation and enjoyment (and environmental protection) Also cheap subsidies to timber companies which drasticly reduce the price of building materials...
-Science research raising life expectancy, arts funding, cheap package and letter delivery, Sesame Street...
-and of course, the worlds largest and most sophistacted military (of course, mostly staffed by never-mos as Mormon kids that age have more important things to do)

Mormons (12-15% with tithing, Fast offerings, donations) if you count unpaid service hours this goes up higher

-cookie cutter churches with burlap walls
-"service opportunities" (and if you act now, we'll throw in the toilet brush at no additional charge!)
-shopping malls in Utah
-hunting preserves in Utah
-Brigham Young university in Utah
-Thrift stores in Utah
-Millions of copies of the book of mormon used as toilet paper and doorstops throughout the world
-Insufferable advertisements on the internet and YouTube
-A ban on gay marriage in California

You forgot the whole justice department. They kind of do important things.

I won't even mention the obvious problems with this.

Lately, what is that Mormons want more than anything? To appear to be mainstream Christian. But, obviously, those folks don't grasp the basic fundamentals of Christianity.

This reminds me of two sayings by Christ. "Do you alms in private" and "Don't let the left hand know what the right hand is doing" -- of course, paraphrased.

I'm not a Christian, but I'm not the one jumping up and down demanding that I be recognized as such.

It seems to go against E. T. Benson's warning of pride. "We're so much better than the government. Maybe we should be the new government". I noticed this is on the page of hard core Mormon, Utah politician, and the brainwashed Mormons love getting in the sheep caravan.

They don't even get their own basics . . .

I wanted to post "Wow, that is interesting. I'd love to see your church's full financial disclosure showing how much money is taken in and how much it gives out, where etc. so I could know how they do this. Where does your church post it's information for it's members disclosing how they use church funds?"

But my mom had commented to my friend who posted this nonsense on Facebook so anything I said would have started an argument with her so I skipped it.

The government may not be the most efficient but I would GLADLY give 50% of my earnings to them over 10% tithing to the LDS church. At least the government publishes their budget. LDS Inc won't release their's. Most of their money goes to temples, malls, advertising, and monuments unto themselves. AND I don't think ANY tithing actually goes to charities. Isn't that why they have fast offerings and other funds you are supposed to give to?

I'm still confused about this. I get that the LDS church is trying to say it helps people more than the government, but what does the photo montage mean?

In other words, supposed I had a restaurant, Brett's Diner, and in my newspaper ad I had a really nice picture of 1965 Ford Mustang. How does that convey how good my food is? Don't I want to have a picture of food you can get from my place that is either different or looks better than anybody else's?

Sure, the photos show the church (allegedly) doing some great things. But in what way are they DIFFERENT from what the federal government does?

Is this some kind of metaphor for cognitive dissonance?

They are suggesting that the ten percent is spent on things in the photo..there are nine pennies on one side and the tenth is by itself...

Unless you consider building temples and printing Books of Mormon charity, the LDS church is fairly mediocre in its charity.

In January 2006, from the Church PR department, (Deseret News Publishing Company): Edgley said, "that since 1984, the LDS Church has donated nearly $750 million in cash and goods to people in need in more than 150 countries." That averages to $37.5 mil per year or about $3-$4 per Mormon member went to the poor. The total of $750 million in 22 years spent in cash and goods to people in need is only a small fraction of what the church spent on a mall they bult in Salt Lake City.

The best estimates are that the church's assets are around $100 billion and that tithing runs $4.5-6.5 billion per year. But no matter how you slice it, humanitarian work is a small part of church expenditures.
Even many individuals and corporations spend more than 1% on charitable work:
Wal-Mart - 1.5%
Ford - 2.2%
JP Morgan 2.1%
MBNA - 1.4%
UPS - 1.1%
GM - 1.23%
Avon - 3.97%
MetLife - 1%
Prudential - 1.22%
Eli Lilly - 1.4%

According to the IRS, the average charitable contribution is 2.2%.

Why is it that several large corporations and the average gentile are more charitable than the one and only true church upon the face of the whole earth? Again we come back to the fact that the church proportionately spends very little of its wealth and income on helping the poor and unfortunate. Since the Church won't disclose it's finances, we cannot calculate the exact non-religious charitable giving, but it appears that less than 1% of tithing actually goes to helping the poor. If you include investment income, it's much less than that.
Why does there need to be a corporate side? Why does the church need to buy malls, hotels, restaurants, condos, ranches, farmland, Oahu land, resorts, TV stations, radio stations, newspapers, and insurance companies? How does owning these things contribute to the 3 missions of the church of perfecting the saints, redeeming the dead, and preaching the gospel?

The real point is that the church seems to get more money through tithing and investment income than it knows what to do with.


http://mormonthink.com/tithing.htm

Let take away the church's tax exempt status and all tax deductions for money given to it. After all this is provided for them by the government which they hate so much. And let's force them to provide full financial disclosure. Plus, if the church was doing so much, they wouldn't need to advertise how much they are doing.

How much do temples help the community? I'm not certain they even help the dead.

It had to be said.

Shearman & Sterling - 40,000 pro bono hours devoted to the Rwanda genocide trial in 2008
Boies, Schiller & Flexner - more than 7,000 pro bono hours getting health care for economically disadvantaged children in Florida in 2008

http://www.americanlawyer.com/PubArticleTAL.jsp?id=1202547371070&2009_Pro_Bono_Package&slreturn=20130122235819

Latham & Watkins - 50,000 hours in 2009
http://www.americanlawyer.com/PubArticleTAL.jsp?id=1202431539716

Steptoe & Johnson - 36,000 pro bono hours helping child victims of human trafficking
http://www.steptoe.com/about-service.html

My favorite is the Innocence Project.
http://www.innocenceproject.org/
They just celebrated their 300th exoneration (actually 302).

When Mormons can make similar claims, I'll be impressed. For now, they have a glossy PR picture. More tithing well spent.

I rest my case.

T-Bone

"A religion that can't ask everything of you does not have the
power to save you . . . Oh, by the way, don't come to the Church
in this time of economic turmoil unless it's to pay your
tithing."

Most Mormons don't pay 50% in taxes. Once you factor in all the tax breaks for tithes and having large families, many Mormons don't pay any income taxes at all.

For instance, my TBM brother and his wife have 5 kids. Just from knowing that alone, their taxes would add up like this . . .

Standard family deduction: $11,900
Personal exemptions: $3,800 x 7 = $26,600
Refundable child tax credit: $1,000 x 5 = $5,000

Just with those numbers, my brother's family would have to have taxable income of around $78,000 before they even paid a penny in income taxes (and I know they aren't making that much). On top of that, for every dollar they earn that's less than that number, the government is giving them money back, since the child tax credit is 'refundable'. Further, these calculations don't even take into consideration earned income tax credits and income deductions for tithing, medical expenses, retirement contributions, mortgage interest, and student loans, etc. All of which I know they have.

Funny thing is, they are the first ones to complain about 'freeloaders' in the country. Maybe they should look at themselves in the mirror.

Be sure to go on the site...what a joke. 7/10 of one percent went to humanitarian aide over twenty five years...

To pay fifty percent in taxes you either have to live in Boston, where there is federal, state and city taxes, or make $300k a year and add in advalorem on houses, cars, sales taxes etc...

He is just trying to get elected by aligning himself with the Utah Mormons. This is false advertising.

And what is with all the pics of African kids on the poster. Does the mormon church give food to Africans?

The photos need to changed to the Polynesian cultural center, Deseret industries, the billion dollar mall, beneficial life, ensign peak, at reserves, BYU, Deseret news, Deseret book company, bonneville
media, temple square hospitality, Deseret digital. If someone puts together a real poster, I'll be certain to back you on fb..