NY44M,
I understand about the transfer of the 8megabucks; but, regardless of how it is listed, it is PROFIT, i.e. it is money that is not used to pay real expenses of the Aussie KHs (as, say, property taxes, utility bills, hall rental/mortgage, etc.). The thing I was getting at is that in the US, it is standard (but unadmitted) practice to decide what anmount of taxes will be paid (that is, profit admitted to) this year and work backwards from there. In short, the practice is to try to determine what the least amount of taxes can be claimed before the Feds audit your butt, add, oh, say, 15% saftey factor, and figure out how to make the figures agree. There is a growing understrata of American business that is learning how to deal in cash only. If I ask you to build a swimming pool for me, you will quote me X, and upwards of 40% of X being for taxes, permits, etc. etc. If I say to you, I will pay you 70% of X as cash, and you have a ready supply if illegal alien labor (or not), you can make 10% more profit by accepting the cash and never declaring the income. Now, that scenario is a bit fraught with danger, as the pool is a physical item, if the community is on its toes and sees the construction going on w/o a permit they might get a little nosey (although bribes to teamsters as well as public officials are more than common) and the problems begin. However, since the WTS issues receipts for some donations, they know that these receipts will be pretty much ALL that the Feds will be able to have a paper trail on. In other words, if I donate $100 ands do not demand a receipt (therefore announcing my intention to NOT specifically declare the donation to the FEDS) the WTS can claim that I didn't give them a thing, thereby generating $100 of PURE profit. But, the WTS knows that I would probably become just a bit suspicious, not to mention the Feds. So, what the WTS must do is figure out what amount they can declare that I gave to them with it being reasonably acceptable to me and the Feds. In other words, they have to decalre SOMETHING, and knowing the way these weasles think, dollars to donuts, they claim 10% of actual, non receipted, donations. You know, Ceasar's tithings to Ceasar.
Now, this all generates a whopping pile of cash, which NY wants sent to them. The problem is that most govts take a dim view of letting a large pile of cash that is generated in their space just flit away into the night. Plus, unless the $8million is laundered in some fashion (by declaring it as "foreign expenses", or "bumblebee research", or some such) the Feds are gonna be hard pressed to allow the "non-profit" status to continue. Now, there isn't anything "illegal" about this; however, we do start to use words like "immoral", and "materialistic".
Which is my final point: what [edited] is this $8Million bucks being used for? I came up with $720million bucks by taking the profit per Aussie publisher, i.e. $120. (8,000,000 (profit) divided by 60,000 pubishers actually comes out to $133 per publisher, but I rounded it down to be conservative). Plus, you came up with $200 per publisher donation (and that is just the claimed stuff) and a 40% overall expense rate (for hall utilities, magazines, and traveling medicine men overseers. What else is there?) seems reasonable. Now, just straight across the board ( I don't know if Australia is the mean for world economies. I know that the US is probably greater, as would be the UK, Saudia Arabia, but then there is Somalia, Peru, Ehtiopia) and with no other figures to go on, I assume that of the nations with substantial (a subjective term, I know) JW population, Australia has the average economy. This would mean that with a world of 6 million JWs, $120 time 6,000,000 gives $720 million of PURE PROFIT going to Brooklyn EACH YEAR. Now folks, even in this world of trillion dollar deficits and trade budgets and $67 per barrel for oil, $720,000,000 is still a lot of frigging cash. (Yes folks, keep that in mind, this is [edited] cash!!!! Not raw materials with eventual profit after manufacturing investment, this is right now, buy the puppy, folding dollar bills cash. That is enormous.) Where is all of this cash going? Again, you can't let that kind of bucks just sit in a NY bank and not have the Feds continue to agree to non-profit status. It has to be going somewhere to be doing something or the Feds would be siphoning it. You've got many many congrgations in the US doubling and tripeling up on the same KH, while $720,000,000 could by a shite load of KHs, but it ain't happening. Where is that money going?
