I had posted this in response to some questions on the Napa Valley CA Court Case thread... I am starting a new thread and reposting it here...
There was some previous discussion going on about the WTBTS's many corporations, ownership of KH's, articles of incorporation, non-profit status, how KH loans and finances work, etc. Well, good news, I don't want to disclose too much information about myself, but let's just say in my profession, I do a lot of work in this area of expertise.
To answer the question about ownership of KH's though, each congregation is required by the WTBTS to set up a non-profit corporation in their particular state with the Secretary of State, or Corporations Division, or Businesses Division. Anyone can do a yahoo or google search for "(state you live in) Secretary of State" and drill down until you find the businesses or corporations division, and do a corporate name search. You'll find that every congregation in the state has sent in articles of incorporation and applied for non profit status. You can view the copies in most states of the original documents and see exactly who is listed as officers of the corporation, or congregation. Separate non profit entities in theory help shield the NY corporations from liability. That is why all monies are basically sent to NY as donations or held in secure deposit with NY. If someone were to fall and break a hip on a slick pavement and sue the local cong, most likely NY would be left out of it, and they would find that the local non-profit's coffers were empty, while NY had millions or billions. However, this doesn't prevent anyone from naming them as defendents in a lawsuit.
In order to be accepted as a non-profit organization, by law you have to designate in your charter that if your corporation ever ceases to exist that you will then donate all assets to another non-profit corporation, whether you specifically name the successor organization is up to you. If not, we could all open up non-profits and run them until we amassed fortunes and then dissolve them and deposit the earnings in our personal bank accounts. So to cover the bases the WTBTS has made it mandatory that all KH's list them as the successor owner in their non-profit charters so as to make sure that the assets wouldn't fall into the wrong hand and would still belong to the WT if anything happened.
As regards the WT's accounting practices regarding loans and insurance, they are definitely shady, but non profits are excluding from much of the routine filings that other corporations have to submit to the IRS etc, which is what normally would lead the IRS to inquire. Ray Franz book "In Search of Christian Freedom" touches on the accounting practices of the WT which could get them in hot water should the IRS ever find out that they are basically operating as mortgage lenders to the congregations but doing so under the premise that the WT is donating the land and KH to the local cong, and that the local congregation is just sending donations to the WT when really its a loan payment. I would assume that there is a lot of funny business and accounting practices going on when it comes to insurance practices in Brooklyn also. It appears that NY is doing this to save itself from paying taxes. What happened to "pay Ceasar's things to Ceasar?" I guess it's do as I say not as I do...
Go to the NY or PA Secretary of State and do a search and you'll find that "Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses" is now a legal non profit corporation. So now they adapted it so that when they baptize you or DF you, and they say "Christian Cong of JW's" it's really referring to a real corporation!! Just another way that legalism has taken over and they've adapted legally to try to cover themselves from lawsuits from disgruntled DFed by claiming they said they were going to submit to this corporation when they got baptized and formed a verbal covenant or agreement. Pardon my rambling... BLAH!