church financial fraud may double in a few years to a whopping sixty billion dollars annually still church leaders want church donations exempt public scrutiny joins me we discuss the public's interest in church open accounting it's my pleasure to welcome all politics signs to welcome thank you how much money goes into church donations and how much of that profits are given this special exemption special no tax treatment that's right that's right you know the contract that we the citizens we the taxpayers make with nonprofit organizations is we give you ta status and in return you open your books you show us how you spend the money you claim to be a worthwhile organization spending it in a worthwhile committee focused or way great show us where that's where you want to be that's not what it is today you know that is the way you want to be and that is true for every nonprofit except for religious religious organizations and because there isn't this public scrutiny of church books we're finding that there is an enormity of fraud fraud exactly fraud is but that that's just the beginning i mean we do have this fraud and very little way to to uncover it to understand it i need to use your terminology it's fraud plus and by plus you mean lavish living by preachers person is exemptions or conversion or stuff in the lot of  not even classed as fraud is exactly right that is just simply from the standpoint of the of the church this is just an appropriate lifestyle i'm not sure that people would really want as public policy not to happen but it gets bigger when we look at the taxes that again we the citizens we the taxpayers pay in lieu of these tax deducted donations to these enormous churches do we have open open books with other non profits other than churches and their iras for ny ninety which lists the all of their income where it goes to list all the principals in the organization and how much they make to the dollar their salaries were going to keep them clean and moral if we have the same you're a member of one of those eight percent of churches when you ask can i see the books they say no that's incredible to me and the other other other point is you have to be a member of the ninety two percent to see those books and again one minute i guarantee you go to charity navigator and look at any nonprofit you're looking at there their income statement do we find that the ninety two percent or that are willing to shoot over new books are they more what we call the traditional religions and i think that's right yeah you know if you look at some of the televangelists there you know the serious money people these are the ones that are going to be more shy more embarrassed perhaps of opening their books and this is where we find  these are called legally parsonages and you think of you know some some old man in a tiny little little house a little cottage you know heated with with a wood stove these are six lavish mansions including an air conditioned dog house for the dog an  gulfstream g four private jet and he was asking for six thousand of his flock to give one thousand dollars apiece looking for six million dollars to pay for his jet now i'm not quite sure why he can't just stream and not go at all why again it's just an estimate i'd love to give you better figures but we just don't know their books are all closed but we do have estimates that there are raking in a hundred million exactly yeah yeah these six ministers that you just cited that's right the estimate of the amount of tax that we the taxpayer must kick in to compensate for the i r s leniency with churches is seventy one billion dollars per year in the us seventy one part of a city council and you're trying to make ends meet in these in these hard times you're trying to figure out how you're going to going to spread the pain of these taxes look all you want you're not going to be able to go to these churches these these churches which might have huge amounts of land sorry off dollars that's just just one ministry oral roberts university is not without scale is the thing that which just kind of drove me crazy and i'm not sure if you call this this fraud but but certainly seems to laundering money laundering one thing that i wish i thought of this myself but someone made the observation that as a money laundering front something which is not even required to file income tax returns is that is the perfect what you imagine you know of the mafia and some some pizza joint that never seems to have any customers but but you know makes all this money is a lot of money laundering but they actually have to file tax forms tax and tax returns not so for a church the perfect money laundering front now we're focused on certainly churches in america but this problem of fraudulent church accounting is not limited to americans globalism exactly right and the number you quoted at the beginning is a global figure it's bad enough here in the united states where you get some some serious money but this is just a minority of the entire church given worldwide and it's not limited to christians either but that's right christianity is of course the largest religion but muslim is right on its heels i think christianity is about a third of the total world population two thirds us plenty of room for for fraud graft their bread the you know we we've got muslims involved we've got rabbis involved with mormons are victims of some of these exotic schemes and so are scientology but there you go you know the the emerging emerging churches in africa is a big one and actually if you bring up scientology which i think is it is a great point  from my standpoint i'm not a christian i'd love to see this happen but this is a message that i think christians can embrace at the same time this hiddenness benefits by one sri  deductions that it's christians have of god looking over their shoulder they're going to be answering to god in the afterlife or what they've done with the money they're ok with that but we the taxpayer who are picking up the bill are going to problem now do you think exist compensation is much of a problem in the american churches or religious groups i certainly think so but but again to some extent this is all the speculation we actually don't have the the numbers we have the example of the twenty three thousand dollar toilet that apparently the way it is in my church and i respond that's terrific but you must understand this is making you look bad that it is best for the average christian watching the show to encourage their church to open their books make it public file and what is amazing is this is a senator a u s senator republican you think that he would carry carry more weight on the senate finance committee and he asked for just a a fairly straightforward list of information you know i've had some of my  which demands forms like the ninety not quite is as open but she's kind of walking the walk so so good for her the other five not so much and i'm just imagining you know you've got a senator a public inquiry and these these televangelist organizations can still be just dismissed and we don't we don't feel like it and there's no no repercussions why are these guys out of business it's amazing we have a social contract and thank you intimated earlier basically there is a deduction if you're a church or religious organization provided in this provision i think it was not really clear and not firm enough don't we expect some social good that will come from could could digress i do have a question about about how much benefit does happen with that money americans are are quite generous people we give over one hundred billion dollars to churches and i'd like to know what fract that goes to soup kitchens helping the homeless that's one thing now where churches do that is fantastic one of it that is just a number one i don't know how much that is number to the rough estimates we've seen for that suggest that it's just a few percent and in other words when you when you look at ok we have churches how do we categorize these from an ira standpoint is are they more like charities care for example gives ninety two percent of its the money that comes in three of the three point three billion going to care ninety two percent goes to its programs eight percent overhead or is it more like a country club give a few percent from my standpoint it's much more like the country at another example wal mart gives a billion dollar the a billion dollars per year in good works now should we then declare wal mart a charity but when of course about four percent of its total total income which is kind of where churches are but you're touching on that real sticky issue what is a church what is a religious organization right and this is from an ira standpoint now a lot of people might object look at the last thing we want is the government defining ok you're a church and you're not a church that's that kind of thing that is the way it is right now that is so so when scientology comes to the i r s and says we want nonprofit status because we're church it's the i r s of all places it is deciding yes your church no you're not a church that sort of thing so the government's already heavily into the church defining business and your absolute complete separation of church and state is not possible when we want reasonable church and state separation that it's in the public interest in the public to find that  merely has to declare i am a church so if you and i want to have a homeless shelter or a food program some like that would have to go through a fairly arduous process took to get our five a one c three or nonprofit status in the case of a  church instead of the i r s telling you you tell the i r s oh by the way i'm a church now there we go this is been a growing trend according to what i read is that there are some cases even individuals to clearing themselves of corporation declare themselves a church and there are a few points that go into defining a church it has to be a distinct legal entity it has to have some form of creator rick and i use formal worship on it as to h government on and on and on and on but i think that when you read it was about fourteen points of the iris is laid out and will pop those up for our viewers but the one thing that you're struck by all of this is the wiggle room that you can basically call yourself a church and you just might qualify right right exactly and then the the what it when it comes to the public good that as you know me the taxpayer being happy supporting a nonprofit organization i suspect that in that list it's there's nothing that says a church must give let's say sixty percent or more of its income to good works nothing at all and that i suspect your blog on his talk big so it concerns you or you affiliated in any way with a religious organise mission rich or no i'm not i'm actually an atheist i blog at cross examined blog dot com love to have folks come in and check it out as you mentioned i do have  there's a strange thing here you've got an atheist telling christians a message that i think they're really going to buy i think it actually makes a lot of sense that the status quo the way it is right now makes christians look bad if you're in a church you're you're squeaky clean you're pleased with how much money you're giving to good works great it doesn't look good when you hide behind the this cloak of secrecy so take the take that away you might take freedom from religion seriously which you should  maybe it's the politics of religion that they've gotten who do good with government too much and they're getting too many bennies that the rest of us have to subsidize because that before your motivation it is and when you look at the complex list of benefits  they get from a financial attack standpoint the parsonage exemption where the executive director of a nonprofit he has to pay for his housing himself and if he if he gets as a gift that is declared as income not so in the case of a church sight of jesus i mean that is you know it's it's not this world it's not about money it's about good works it's about heart believe that perhaps some of this church county and this church finances at least leaders lose lose sight of that oh i think so i think we are when you go back to authentic christianity which is popular within protestantism these days you do wonder what what jesus would do if he were to come back and see this this  this prosperity gospel this you need to sow a faith seed in proportion to your need in other words you know you mr poor person you know you're the one who needs to give the most it's just it's meyer for example creflo dollar some of these these folks are also in that in that same category and you know i guess you sort of have to applaud them trying to spin this in a positive way when you want to complain about somebody driving red a rolls royce or flying around the gulfstream g four they say none of this is totally within the gospel this is what i'm talking about you know you do the right thing and it could be just like me i truly foundation board is look get an idea of how big the problem is and it is such an easy step we have of four million one hundred we have for the for the tiny congregations who don't have an account and we have a four ninety easy it's four pages of this is this is not a big deal if the one point five million charities in this country that haven't had an income of less than a hundred thousand one hundred thousand dollars per year can do with that i think any small church into the same thing that they can keep their books they can do this is this is not a big burden trinity foundation board also recommended  criminal civil case law do you think there's any prospect for that in the grassley commission the senate commission can't really get compliance that that's a trickier thing which is which is why i and focusing mostly on just open the books but you raise a great point you know what if you do find fraud what if you know any objective third party would just say you know you were just totally fleecing these people who were just kind of gullible i mean they they listen to you as a leader you were totally shortchanging them  my if i was going to say fear i'm not sure if that's the right word for it that may just be religious freedom that is people have the freedom to do foolish things to shout out you have to make your people you really need to reach are the ones that are  when when these these guys you know go off the rails they're making you the average christian look bad are these the gullible that are really going to be fleeced somehow some way i suppose you can go there that that's is hardly any reason to say well let's just go ahead and let the police or you know do their business i mean i think if you look at the u s versus europe you find that europe is a lot more post christian than the u s is and  suspicious of the evil intent i think so and i had at up at a friend who was was well mentioning the situation with her father where he was kind of shut in and he really liked the people who would call up and ask for money because he was lonely he would talk to them god how much more valuable is that than the hundred dollars you've got in your wallet and do you have to have  that and yet we're we've come full circle but can be done what must be done and how do we go about it i'd love to see this be a grassroots movement you know for me for the freedom from religion foundation for some atheist organization organization to push that is going to be uphill battle and especially when we have christians who are being harmed by the status quo this hurts them so my appeal is for the christians listen to this  within your church to make public your income your income statement this is not a big deal go to guide star a charity navigator and see what they what the other non profits do let's open these books if your church has nothing to hide great don't hide it but we know where we were going to get resistance from the church leaders because they have resisted to this point we're hiding something that people in the pews need to to rise up and  take charge themselves bob signs they're going to thank you number one for blogging number two for being really concerned about this it is important it's not an agreed to it is issue at all it's a vital issue we hold to account the people who purportedly are doing god's work and that in this social contract we expect nothing if not the money we expect an equivalent amount of good deeds socially acceptable deeds that meet with that social contract and i think that's what you're talking about in these days when you've got local and state governments cutting back cutting teachers cutting police cutting fire those those kind of kind of essential services because of lack of money to give these tax breaks again seventy one billion dollars per year to churches just inexcusable thank you very much for being my us it's been a pleasure