JeffT

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Posts by JeffT

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  36

  Revealing Watchtower tax returns

  by Nambo in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  please excuse if this has already been posted:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysyqish-l_e.

  under the freedom of information act, this guy has tax returns showing where your money goes, where it is invested, companies like northrop gruman, monsanto, cigarette and porn peddlers, and we thought we where giving money to god!

  i am quite sickened to discover i was giving money to the watchtower to invest in arms manufacturers..

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  JeffT

  Thanks Blondie. On reading through that my first thought was to wonder who the target audience is. For starters there are not a lot of Witnesses with enough money to worry about setting up trusts. And most people who have that kind of money have lawyers and accountants to explain tax law to them. They don't need the WTBS to write up a simplified brochure for them. Are they trying to impress the sheeple that they have big support somewhere?

  I'm continuing some research on those 990's. As of the most recent year (2014) the trust no longer owns any Phillip Morris stock, it does have a little bit of money in a couple of defense related companies, but not much. Most of the trusts money is held in blue chip stocks and bonds, which would be consistent with a requirement to invest low risk assets.

  For some reason (what I'm looking at next) for the 2014 tax year the entity changed from an exempt trust to a personal foundation subject to taxes. I need to read some IRS docs to find out what's up with that. It paid about $12000 in taxes for 2014.
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  36

  Revealing Watchtower tax returns

  by Nambo in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  please excuse if this has already been posted:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysyqish-l_e.

  under the freedom of information act, this guy has tax returns showing where your money goes, where it is invested, companies like northrop gruman, monsanto, cigarette and porn peddlers, and we thought we where giving money to god!

  i am quite sickened to discover i was giving money to the watchtower to invest in arms manufacturers..

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  JeffT

  Sister O'Reilly is probably dead. One of the main reasons for setting up a trust like this is to avoid inheritance taxes. Older rich people set them up to make sure their money ends up with somebody they want to have it.

  Some basics about trusts. A trust is its own legal entity, it has its own tax ID number and its own registrations with state and local agencies. There are three main people (or other legal entities) involved in it.

  The Grantor (in this case Mrs. O'Reilly) has her lawyer write up the appropriate legal paperwork to establish the separate legal entity. Those documents designate a trustee to manage the affairs of the trust. That person cannot be the Grantor or the Beneficiary. The Beneficiary receives the income generated by the assets in the trust. All legal power to manage the affairs of the trust reside with the Trustee, the Beneficiary can't tell the Trustee to do. (Neither can the Grantor after the trust is set up and funded). There are sound legal and ethical reasons to do this. If your son is an addict you might write trust documents that tell the Trustee to make sure he has a place to live and food, but not to give him cash because he'll buy drugs with it.

  The trustee has a legal duty to do what the trust documents tell him to do. I know the WTBS has a brochure about leaving your money to them, I'd love to see a copy of it if anybody (Blondie?) can tell me where to find it. I suspect that they have this all pretty well spelled out in their "suggestions."

  In this case the trust documents probably tell the Trustee to do the best he can to maximize profits, and therefore income to the Beneficiary (the WTBS). Including details about how to invest money might well create a legal conflict for the Trustee, and would have been avoided by whoever wrote the trust documents. Assuming he knew what he was doing.
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  44

  Honeymoon over for the carts

  by Deltawave in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  speaking with inlaws i another congregation today who said exactly what is being said in our own hall.

  the trolly work is long and boring and no one even notices they are there anymore but walk right on by.

  jehovah really is speeding up the work lol.

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  JeffT

  They're going to have to build some kind of hot coffee dispenser off the back of those things.

  If they tried that here (Seattle) they'd have a line formed in about three minutes. Of course they would all be looking for double tall lattes and the like, but it would generate some attention.
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  36

  Revealing Watchtower tax returns

  by Nambo in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  please excuse if this has already been posted:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysyqish-l_e.

  under the freedom of information act, this guy has tax returns showing where your money goes, where it is invested, companies like northrop gruman, monsanto, cigarette and porn peddlers, and we thought we where giving money to god!

  i am quite sickened to discover i was giving money to the watchtower to invest in arms manufacturers..

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  JeffT

  The "some one else" is Henrietta O'Rielly, whoever she was. It says that right at the top of the form this guy is reading from.

  The beneficiary of a trust can refuse to accept it, if they do so in writing within nine months of the death of the person who established it. If they do so, the entire thing goes to the next person in line to receive it. Disclaiming the assets is an irrevocable act, so you don't have the opportunity to get the money back if you change your mind.

  So no, the WTBS can't refuse to take money from one part of the trust, it's theirs, and they can't control what the trustee does with the investment, although they could change trustees, which might well cost a bunch of lawyer fees without fixing the problem.

  The bottom line here: this is NOT proof of hypocrisy on the part of the WTBS. They are the ongoing beneficiaries of a gift over which they have no control. There are real issues to get pumped up over.
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  36

  Revealing Watchtower tax returns

  by Nambo in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  please excuse if this has already been posted:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysyqish-l_e.

  under the freedom of information act, this guy has tax returns showing where your money goes, where it is invested, companies like northrop gruman, monsanto, cigarette and porn peddlers, and we thought we where giving money to god!

  i am quite sickened to discover i was giving money to the watchtower to invest in arms manufacturers..

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  JeffT

  I wish I could drive a stake through this thing's heart so it would stay dead. These are not tax returns for the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. They are tax returns for a charitable trust established by some one else for the benefit of the Watchtower. The WTBS has NO control over where the money is invested, that is how trust funds work.

  In case anybody asks, I'm a retired accountant.
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  30

  Office Jargon, drives me nuts

  by punkofnice in

  1. social
  2. humour

  'granular' seems to be the latest buzz word going around my office.

  previously it was 'appetite'.. abstract words that appear to be designed to make the person saying it appear powerful and part of the 'team'.. as lord sugar has observed before; why not just speak english and say what you mean.. office jargon really annoys me.

  i had enough loaded language and jargon in the disgusting jw cult..

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  JeffT

  
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  38

  Most Poorly Written JW Book

  by JW_Rogue in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  so i was thinking the other day that the wt corp has produced thousands of books over the years.

  although the writers have changed the style is almost always the same.

  however, some books are just worse than others.

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  JeffT

  I have not seen any of the recent literature, it all sounds awful.

  The books about Revelation and Daniel offered up all sorts of speculative interpretation with no evidence to indicate why this was so.

  I remember studying the "Eternal Purpose" book shortly after I was baptized. It quickly disappeared after 1975, probably because of references to that year, and the fact that it was so poorly written.
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  14

  Very important, you must save JWs from dieing at Armageddon!

  by Crazyguy in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  every drop of breast milk has roughly 1 million white blood cells in it.

  so the next time you see a jw drink milk or eating milk with his cereal etc.

  you must run over and take it out of his/her hands and then give them a stern warning.

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  JeffT

  Crazyguy, I was comparing the claimed numbers of cells in milk, with the number in blood. If (questions on this addressed below) the cited numbers are correct the JW's shouldn't be drinking milk of any kind.

  Re cells in milk: as noted above, there is a lot of nonsense going around about the dangers of milk. I don't feel like wading through it all to find the real numbers. But if there is ANY significant number, JW's should abstain from milk as well as blood if they're going to be consistent.
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  21

  Even the Overlapping Generations isn't an original concept

  by paradisebeauty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  to my surprise, i found this: .

  the overlapping generations model is an economic model .... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/overlapping_generations_model.

  if those people from wt are inspired, why can't they at least come up with something original .....

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  JeffT

  1914 + 80 years (70 or 80 years if you are mighty) was why it was not an issue until 1995.

  Funny, sometime around 1975 I said that the system might go on until 1994, if that scripture was a guide. I was told that it couldn't possibly go on that long.
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  14

  Very important, you must save JWs from dieing at Armageddon!

  by Crazyguy in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  every drop of breast milk has roughly 1 million white blood cells in it.

  so the next time you see a jw drink milk or eating milk with his cereal etc.

  you must run over and take it out of his/her hands and then give them a stern warning.

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  JeffT

  I guess JW's will have to stop drinking milk. I'm surprised no one (including me) ever thought of this before. Human blood contains about 4,000-10,000 white cells per milliliter.