JeffT: The only financial statement that would actually tell us what's going on is a consolidated statement for ALL of the Watchtower's related entities. A thin slice of the pie (which is what these numbers represent) don't tell us anything about the pie as a whole. Transferring money from one operation to another may look like money disappeared if you're only looking at the outgoing transaction. We need to know where the money WENT.
Agree
Just examining each branch separately doesn't tell us much. And, I think it is important to take into account the different tax laws for each country to get a clearer picture of how the org moves money around.
For example, the Canadian branch tax returns had an anomaly show up a few years back that would affect an analysis if it wasn't taken into consideration. It was in 2014(3?) when the org forgave all those KH loans. And why? It was because the Canadian Revenue Agency made them do it. Charities could no longer act as banks so the org had to forgive those loans. Which skewed their asset/liability figures dramatically.
A shell game, indeed