Comments about ‘LDS Church buys lot on North Temple’

What on earth is the church doing buying all this land. Are your trying to own the entire downtown. What is this all about.

Its about owning property surrounding important church properties.... being able to control what type of businesses and "neighbors" it has nearby.
Much like the Vatican doesn't want a porno shop in its plaza......

It is all about protecting the "area".

And, if they own so much land... it assures that at least there will be money for redevelopment and the area will not become a blighted area like so many downtowns across the nation.......

Anonymous, if you're an out of towner, you may not be aware, but the church built the town once upon a time

Because of the church's emphasis on buying properties and increasing its business portfolio I think many people are reconsidering their level of donations. Is the LDS movement about spirituality or amassing wealth?

Maybe people don't realize, but the LDS Church does contribute a lot to relief aid to other countries, along with the US. Also, the church helps support a lot of needy people daily with food, money, you name it. There's also the issue of paying the power bills, etc for all the buildings. On and on and on...

How do you suppose they could keep doing this without making some money somewhere?

Personally, I think it's pretty smart to have diverse investments, as you never know what will happen with the economy.

It is the money that the Church makes from its investments that allows it to provide robust humanitarian aid to everyone needed, member or nonmember alike. As K noted, the money has to come from somewhere. Tithes and fast offerings from members are used primarily to fulfill the core mission of the Church, which is missionary work, genealogical and temple work, and aiding members in their pursuit of perfection.

Churches having large investment portfolios is normal. The LDS Church has over 12,000,000 members.
Many of the individual Episcopalian parishes that are fighting to sever their connection with the Episcopal Church have endownments with millions of dollars.
It is not so much the LDS Church has lots of money but that it is a centralized organization.
That said, tithing money is not used for these investment purposes. The Church coordinated the organization of businesses from the start of Utah, provided much of the capital to began businesses in Utah and to some extent has these legacy properties.
The Church has devisted itself of many properties, turning multiple schools over to Utah and Arizona without charging anything to the states for them, and it also split off all its hospitals into Inter-mountain Health Care (IHC) in the 1970s.
As late as the 1990s the Church had a controlling share of the ZCMI department stores.
So in many ways the Church owns much less of Utah than it did in 1929, or even 1975.

I would like to explain how reason is used to form a logical statement.

First, there is a problem with your criticism. Because one owns surplus automatically equates to wrongdoing or at very least, not having as good intentions as claimed- is false logic.

I might be the richest man in the world. If I devote all of my effort to making as much money to be as influential as I can for good, is this bad?

The church spends it's money on providing people with food, shelter, emotional guidance, and hundreds of other things. One might say that building a conference center to house events that only support our own beliefs isn't very charitable but what would you have the church do? Hold a Catholic Mass there? The purpose is to spread a message of hope, one that gives man agency and choices over his own actions and accountability to such actions. This message is that Jesus Christ lived and still does. We believe in something and try to be as best we can according to that belief. The church spends money very efficiently for good reason. I doubt anyone here can claim as much wisedom.

Giant non-profit church corporations are un-american. Especially in these hard times. They are very profitable business and they should give financial disclosure and pay taxes to help the nations recovery.

The Church DOES pay taxes (federal, state, AND local) on its business activities.

Money from member tithes is used for church buildings (with maintenance), temples, welfare, and teaching materials. Not business activities. In my opinion, these type of funds should not be taxed for any church, regardless of denomination. That would be un-American!

How does the church pay tax if it is tax exempt.

Good question. Only those funds donated by the membership, such as tithes and offerings, are tax exempt.

The Church owns several commercial businesses, including Deseret Book, Bonneville International, and Zions Securities (to name a few). These businesses are subject to and pay federal, state, and local taxes just like any other business. Tax exempt Church tithes are not used to fund these companies - and they must show a profit just like any other business in the world in order to continue to operate.