Unsupported claims? Hardly.
Let’s assume that the church’s claims of having 13 million members is correct. And let’s then assume that only half of all members tithe properly. We’re now talking about 6.5 million members tithing 10% of their income. With high-visibility members like Gladys Knight, Steve Young, Mitt Romney, Orrin Hatch, the Osmond family, Glen Beck, Orson Scott Card, Stephen Covey, and Stephenie Meyer, we’re already talking about a lot of theoretical capital. Odds are that being in the public eye, the pressure is on them to tithe their proper amounts.
While the church has been able to hide what it makes as income from tithing, its publicly traded church-owned companies have to report theirs. As of 1996, the church owned 16 radio stattions, one television station (FCC rules forbid owning more than one), the largest beef ranch in all of America (Deseret Ranch in Orlano, FL, the land alone is valued at $858 million), the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii (annual revenue of at least $40 million), AgReserves and ArgriNorthwest farms and ranches, BYU (Provo, Hawaii, and Jerusalem) and Ricks (ID) college campuses, and of course the other Deseret companies that produce clothing, food, and printed products. We also have the dozens of church-owned historical sites that generate money through admissions, donations, and gift sales like the gift shop at the base of Hill Cumorah, places that the Smith family lived or owned, the Carthage jail, or other sites significant to church history.
We’re talking about assets valued at well over 30 billion dollars and an annual income somewhere north of $5.9 billion dollars and that’s without counting any tithing income. My estimates of ‘tens of millions of dollars of unreported income’ are likely well below their actual numbers, but we’ll never really know since the church managed to deceive the US government into thinking it was a legitimate religion.
