[Scientology Doc ‘Going Clear’ Raises New Questions About Church’s Tax-Exempt Status by Daniel Nussbaum] "Documentarian Alex Gibney’s new HBO exposé Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief has raised new questions about the church’s classification as a nonprofit organization and its resultant tax-exempt status.
The film, which made its premiere at Sundance in January, alleges that the church gained nonprofit status in 1993 using less-than-scrupulous methods.
Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard was notorious for his tussles with the IRS. For years, he struggled unsuccessfully to get the Church of Scientology recognized as a nonprofit religious organization, and ultimately fled the country to avoided paying taxes on his burgeoning empire.
Going Clear alleges that in the early 1990’s, Hubbard’s successor, David Miscavige, ordered church members to file thousands of individual lawsuits against the IRS seeking tax-exempt status. The agency was inundated with the suits, and, in a deal that the Church denies ever happened, the IRS allegedly agreed to grant Scientology nonprofit tax-exempt status in exchange for the complete withdrawal of all of the litigation.
The IRS designation was a massive victory for the now-billion dollar Scientology enterprise. The film details the church’s money-collecting prowess; individual church members pay thousands of dollars to “level up” in the organization, and the Church uses its nonprofit status to pay laborers in its vaunted Sea Org unit just $0.40 per hour. According to a 2011 tax filing, just two of the organizations’s dozens of corporate entities are worth at least $1.2 billion..." Full text: Scientology Doc ‘Going Clear’ Raises New Questions About Church’s Tax-Exempt Status
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Scientology
The film, which made its premiere at Sundance in January, alleges that the church gained nonprofit status in 1993 using less-than-scrupulous methods.
Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard was notorious for his tussles with the IRS. For years, he struggled unsuccessfully to get the Church of Scientology recognized as a nonprofit religious organization, and ultimately fled the country to avoided paying taxes on his burgeoning empire.
Going Clear alleges that in the early 1990’s, Hubbard’s successor, David Miscavige, ordered church members to file thousands of individual lawsuits against the IRS seeking tax-exempt status. The agency was inundated with the suits, and, in a deal that the Church denies ever happened, the IRS allegedly agreed to grant Scientology nonprofit tax-exempt status in exchange for the complete withdrawal of all of the litigation.
The IRS designation was a massive victory for the now-billion dollar Scientology enterprise. The film details the church’s money-collecting prowess; individual church members pay thousands of dollars to “level up” in the organization, and the Church uses its nonprofit status to pay laborers in its vaunted Sea Org unit just $0.40 per hour. According to a 2011 tax filing, just two of the organizations’s dozens of corporate entities are worth at least $1.2 billion..." Full text: Scientology Doc ‘Going Clear’ Raises New Questions About Church’s Tax-Exempt Status
See:
Scientology