Atheist Group Asks To Disclose To IRS What Churches Disclose: Nothing
Form 990 is a required filing that creates significant transparency for exempt organizations. In 1971, it was harder to get your hands on Form 990, but a team of reporters working for Warren Buffet’s Omaha Sun took the trouble which allowed them to expose the extent to which fundraising had outstripped service delivery at the venerable Boys Town.
The Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability recommends financial transparency for churches:
The financial statements (and the disclosure of the financial statements) are key components of transparency, both within the ministry and to donors and the public. This flows directly from biblical principles: “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed” (John 3:19–20 NIV).
Association For Honest Attorneys Founder Really Needed A Competent Accountant
Finally, an observation on the sad fallout from the interminable IRS scandal. With the budget cuts and general demoralization, audit rates are down. Compliance is going to erode and more and more sloppiness and outright shenanigans are going to go undetected. Audits serve an educational function. At Lu Gauthier’s Boston Tax Institute seminars, grizzled veterans will compare notes. Old hands will tell youngsters about things that clients get tripped up on – cautionary tales. There will be fewer of those in the next few years. Perhaps more significantly, anybody who does get audited will more likely think that they have been targeted as they get raked over the coals for practices that they know are commonplace.
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Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.