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SEC charges the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

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Re: SEC charges the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

#171

Post by woolcap »

lcall wrote: post #155
fooey wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fund in question has never in 22 years been tapped for any charitable purpose

Due to the extent of Church operations and the ongoing costs, they feel it is wise to save for a rainy day (as they also advise others). More details in my comment elsewhere on this page.

Having lived through the dot-com bust, my wife and I around the same time (20+ years ago), began to set some funds aside for the "rainy day" of not if, but _when_ I might lose my job in tech, given the often volatile nature of the industry. We've been fortunate not to have to need to dip into those funds for that purpose over that time, but I think it's a wise practice, one that the church teaches, and follows.

Re: SEC charges the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

#172

Post by dsfyu404ed »

Sebb767 wrote: post #116
tptacek wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, either way, I'm looking for an intuition about how much an infraction like this should cost. Presumably, the settlement also includes the LDS church's consent to start filing reliable 13F's. I'm not saying I think 5MM is the right number; I'm just saying I have no intuition for what the number should be, and the rationale I see on the thread seems to be "they're big". If I get pulled over in a Bentley with an…

> If I get pulled over in a Bentley with an expired sticker, I pay the same price as someone in a Kia. The fine should scale with the size of the infraction. If you sticker expires on your car, the infraction is the same severity, no matter the car [0]. ~Hiding a few million vs. hiding a few billion in taxes is a whole different level.~ EDIT: They just hid it for information purposes. Not to avoid tax. Therefore, thi…

If the punishment changes based on who you are that kind of shits all over the concept of justice being blind.

>Also, the fine is intended to discourage the behavior. If the money obtained by breaking the law minus the fee is still positive

The money saved not renewing your registration on time is roughly the same regardless of what you're driving so that would seem to favor the fixed fine.

Re: SEC charges the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

#173

Post by ryandrake »

tptacek wrote: post #138
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you support with evidence the idea that Ensign Peak is just going to blow off the fine and pay 5MM every few years instead of filing 13Fs? The parent comment very clearly said “other perpetrators”. I agree: Such a small fine is basically encouragement for other groups to commit the same violations. When the downsides are so negligible small, there is basically no risk for duplicating the bad behavior. If you ge…

I understand. But if the offense is itself marginal, it doesn't make sense to inflict disproportionate punishment on one offender; the penalty still needs to bear some relationship to the offense! We don't, like, arrest Ferrari drivers for violating a no-turn-on-red sign so as to prevent other rich assholes from ignoring the sign. They get the same ticket everyone else does, and if they keep doing it, eventually we s…

A fine (or in this case settlement) has to be somewhat painful in order to deter. I remember a story about Steve Jobs never getting a license plate and always parking in spaces reserved for disabled people, and so on. He just ate the fines and continued the behavior because they were trivial to someone with his fortune.

If OP's numbers are correct, the fine in this case amounts to 0.015% of assets under management--far lower than what anyone would pay a money manager to manage their investments. I'm sure no other potential violator would feel it necessary to change their behavior if they knew their penalty was 0.015%.

Re: SEC charges the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

#174

Post by mikeyouse »

woolcap wrote: post #131

Some info about how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints uses its donations: https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/humanitaria... I suspect most of its investments are targeted towards the same ends.

The part about welfare for those not of their faith was just in the news due to the way we do block grants to states to fund welfare services.. the state of Utah largely hands off their program work to the LDS Church which is pretty unfortunate when they make support contingent on joining their church, going so far to tell people they won't be provided with support that's Federally required unless they get baptized into the church.

https://www.sltrib.com/news/2021/12/02/utah-makes-welfare-so...

Re: SEC charges the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

#175

Post by tarotuser »

gowld wrote: post #149
tarotuser wrote: post #56

A "religion" primarily assumes standard Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, etc: all of which have buildings, assets, collections, and such. For those of us who either have a solitary practice or meet with a small group (coven), none of our costs for our practices are tax exempt. If we are large enough, we usually cannot be "acknowledged by the state" to get tax exempt status. When we do get enough peopl…

Your links explain how in the USA any belief does get non-profit status.

Then you grossly misread the articles.

For the majority religions, its still a paperwork game. However it's also rather standard filing and granting said non-profit status.

The minority religions are told time and again, that "we're not really religions and not worthy of non-profit status". And when we're able to do so, we fight for state recognition of our religion. Most of the times, this fails for us.

And naturally, there's some severe problems with "state recognition of religion leading to non-profit status" and "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion".

Re: SEC charges the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

#176

Post by dfxm12 »

lcall wrote: post #104
burkaman wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Q: Did Ensign Peak fail to comply with SEC regulations? > A: We reached resolution with the SEC. We affirm our commitment to comply with the law, regret mistakes made, and now consider this matter closed. Why would they ask themselves a question that they refuse to answer? Did they have to negotiate these FAQs with the SEC too?

The answer says they "regret mistakes made". (Thoughtful comments appreciated with downvotes; thanks.)

(Thoughtful comments appreciated with downvotes; thanks.)

OK, I'll bite.

The response doesn't answer the question. What "mistakes" are being referenced? Who made them?

This is a yes/no question. Don't get fooled by grammar tricks, like the ambiguous voice of made or the ambiguous reference to mistakes.

Re: SEC charges the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

#177

Post by mikeyouse »

beambot wrote: post #113

Curious. At $32B, the LDS church controls more than virtually all US university endowments -- with the only exception being Harvard. https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=73

Ensign had well over $100 billion by 2020;

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/mormon-church-...

Re: SEC charges the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

#178

Post by dbrueck »

VLM wrote: post #164

I'm sure discussion will rapidly turn into only the most correct opinions about religion or capitalism in general. However, specifically, a form 13-F is a mandatory report for (mostly) mutual funds and similar institutional investors to report in public whatever strategy they're using for investment by dumping a quarterly balance sheet (gross simplification please don't shoot the mostly accurate messenger). Only mutu…

I agree. Overall it seems like the fine was small for a couple of reasons, including:

(a) The SEC raised a concern about how stuff was being reported in 2019, so in 2019 the church changed how stuff was being reported.

(b) It appears that all of the money was being reported to the SEC, just not in under the same entity.

So maybe not a nothingburger, but kinda on that end of the scandal spectrum.

Re: SEC charges the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

#179

Post by ESTheComposer »

lvl102 wrote: post #153
ESTheComposer wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation for that 99% figure? If it's anecdotal then I will give you my anecdote as a non Christian that I see 99% of churches doing charitable works.

It was meant to be a hyperbole.

Cool, my hyperbole is 99% of churches are charities. Now what? What is the point of commenting a hyperbole?

Re: SEC charges the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

#180

Post by lcall »

dfxm12 wrote: post #176
lcall wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer says they "regret mistakes made". (Thoughtful comments appreciated with downvotes; thanks.)

(Thoughtful comments appreciated with downvotes; thanks.) OK, I'll bite. The response doesn't answer the question. What "mistakes" are being referenced? Who made them? This is a yes/no question. Don't get fooled by grammar tricks, like the ambiguous voice of made or the ambiguous reference to mistakes.

The full statement (linked above) covers it better than the short quote.
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