Auld Soul,
I have read of this car leasing "business" online - just don't remember where I read it ("Watching the Watchtower" comes to mind, but that may just be a false memory), or if it was before or after I DA'd (although I think it was before I DA'd). As I recall, the basic facts were set out much as you outlined in your post. There is a reason the WTBTS of PA had set up several subsidiary corporations, long before the corporate reorganization that occurred in - when was it - 2001? There were - and are - lucrative businesses -for profit - in car leasing/rental, providing insurance (health, life, auto liability, etc.) and JW tours to Bethel and elsewhere.
$$$, that's the bottom line (pun intended). When the $$$ stop flowing, the Society starts hurting, and the initial knee-jerk reaction is to put the screws on to the remaining Average Witnesses. I read at this forum (somewhere) that the Society is planning on building a multi-million dollar high-rise in NJ. Now, it seems to me, uninformed ex Average Member that I am, that when the Society is sending thousands of Bethel workers home due because their labor is no longer needed due to adjustments in "technology", the Society surely wouldn't need to build yet another high-rise on the NJ shoreline to house MORE Bethel workers. For what?
This isn't an original line of thought; again, I'm reiterating here what I've read in earlier posts by others. It seems pretty darn obvious to me that the Society intends to resell the building at some future point and at a major profit and pocket the money, allegedly to support the "WWW". And the r&f will cheer and wave figurative palm branches when the annoucement is made - if an announcement IS made. I don't recall reading about any actual announcement being made to the congregations about the sale of a Brooklyn highrise for, I believe the figure I read was $250,000,000 (also read at an earlier post at this forum).
A quarter of a billion dollars collected by the Society for one building in New Jersey (I believe the sale took place in 2003). And the Society doesn't have to file Form 990 because it is exempt from the IRS filing requirements as a "church". I checked. I wanted to see if it was true that the Society didn't have to file the 990 return like ordinary not-for-profit organizations do. So, the Society is just like the Roman Catholic Church it so likes to take pot-shots at! What I want to know is, where did the $250,000,000 go, and what was it used for?
I may as well suck wind, I'll never know where that money went, unless the Society makes a public statement, and I'm not going to hold my breath THAT will ever happen!