A church that began by asking for everything
The financial history of the Latter-day Saints begins not with a tithe but with a total claim. Revelations given in 1831 established the law of consecration and stewardship: members were to deed their property to the Church through a bishop and receive back a stewardship sufficient for their needs, with the surplus used to relieve poverty and build up Zion.1 It was the most demanding economic arrangement the movement would ever attempt, and it lasted about three years. Persecution, repeated forced moves, too few workable stewardships, and unresolved questions about the arrangement's legality and its incentives caused the practice to be abandoned in 1834.
What replaced it was a bank. In November 1836 Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon and others ratified a constitution for the Kirtland Safety Society, with Rigdon as president and Smith as cashier.2 Kirtland in 1836 was booming — the temple newly dedicated, converts pouring in, land prices climbing — and desperately short of the cash needed to turn illiquid land into working capital. Orson Hyde went to Columbus for a charter and came back without one. The organizers reorganized on 2 January 1837 as the Kirtland Safety Society Anti-Banking Company, stamping the word into the plates they had already paid for, and opened for business.
It failed within months. By 1 February the notes were passing at twelve and a half cents on the dollar. On 9 February, Samuel Rounds — acting for Grandison Newell, who had been buying up notes and demanding specie in order to break the institution — filed charges for violating an Ohio statute against unchartered note issuance. The Ohio senate refused a charter the next day. A national panic that spring made banks unwilling to touch the society's paper. Smith and Rigdon resigned between June and July; the society had closed by September, and they were prosecuted.3 Both camps agree it was imprudent; they disagree about everything else. FAIR's position is that the intent was not to break the law but to solve a problem thousands of others faced, and that the failure owed to poor legal advice, economic turmoil and Warren Parrish's later dishonesty.4 Critics read the whole episode as speculation the prophet led and the poor paid for.
One-tenth of all their interest
On 8 July 1838, at Far West, Missouri, Smith dictated the revelation that would carry the institution for the next two centuries. It required members first to give their surplus property, and then to 'pay one-tenth of all their interest annually; and this shall be a standing law unto them forever.'5 A companion revelation assigned the disposition of those funds to a council — in the modern arrangement, the First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve and the Presiding Bishopric, eighteen men, who still constitute the Council on the Disposition of the Tithes.6
For most of the nineteenth century, tithing was aspiration more than practice. Brigham Young defined it as a tenth of everything owned on conversion, a tenth again on arrival in Utah, and a tenth of annual income thereafter — an obligation heavy enough that otherwise faithful members simply withered before it. Young told the October 1875 general conference that neither he nor anyone else had ever paid tithing as the revelation actually required.7 John Taylor, trying to increase compliance, declared a Jubilee in 1880 and forgave half of delinquent tithing and half the debts owed the Perpetual Emigrating Fund; when the unforgiven half still did not come in, he shifted to a carrot-and-stick approach the following year.
Disclosure in this period was informal and personal. Preaching in 1861, Young invited anyone who wanted to know 'anything about the money, item by item, how it has been obtained and how expended' to look at the books, distinguishing his own private business clerks from the trustee-in-trust's.8 Quinn notes the offer did not extend to critics. In 1884 John Taylor ended the practice of presenting financial reports to conference altogether.
The confiscation and the reformation
The Edmunds–Tucker Act, which became law on 19 February 1887, did to the Church what no internal failure had managed: it dissolved the corporation and directed the attorney general to forfeit and escheat to the United States all Church property held above a $50,000 limit, exempting only buildings used exclusively for worship, parsonages and burial grounds, with the proceeds applied to common schools.9 The Supreme Court upheld the confiscation in May 1890. Then the Panic of 1893 arrived: tithing revenue fell from $878,394 in 1890 to $576,584 in 1893, and leaders compounded the damage with heavy losses in mining ventures.10
By the time Lorenzo Snow was ordained president in September 1898 the Church was in genuine danger. A committee report summarized by Rudger Clawson put the Church's net worth at $235,482.90 against loans bearing five to ten percent interest, and concluded that the Church, if not bankrupt, was on the verge of it. Brigham Young Jr. wrote, 'God help us for we are now in the money power of our enemies,' and added, of the accounts, 'It is a mystery to me where the millions have gone.'11 Apostle Francis M. Lyman told Snow he believed Snow's special mission was to get the Church out of debt; Snow answered that his prayer and labor would be to see the Church free from debt.
In May 1899 Snow travelled to drought-stricken St. George for a stake conference and reported receiving a revelation on tithing. In the Church's own retelling he declared: 'The time has now come for every Latter-day Saint, who calculates to be prepared for the future and to hold his feet strong upon a proper foundation, to do the will of the Lord and pay his tithing in full.'12 He spent the remainder of his life carrying the reformation through the stakes of Utah and Idaho. Back in Salt Lake on 30 May, he told a startled audience that the Church had 'no reserve at all.'
The version most members know — that Snow promised rain if the people of Dixie paid their tithing — does not appear in the record. E. Jay Bell searched obituaries, journals, newspapers, official minutes, auxiliary lesson manuals and histories from 1899 to 1933 and found no corroboration; even the stake meetings held immediately after the summer's two major storms record no such connection. The link enters the tradition through three accounts published by Snow's son LeRoy in 1934, 1938 and 1941, thirty-five years after the fact and nearly thirty years after his father's death.13 What Snow actually promised was larger and stranger: forgiveness for past neglect, and the claim that paying a full tithe was 'an essential preparation for Zion.'
Forty-five years of open books
The reformation worked. The bond issues floated under Snow were retired, and at April conference 1907 Joseph F. Smith could announce that 'The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints owes not a dollar that it cannot pay at once. At last we are in a position that we can pay as we go. We do not have to borrow any more, and will not have to if the Latter-day Saints continue to live their religion and observe this law of tithing. It is the law of revenue to the Church.'14
Disclosure returned under external pressure. The Senate's 1904–07 investigation of apostle-senator Reed Smoot forced the Church's economic power into public argument, and Smith acknowledged in 1904 that general authorities were supported from tithing. Rudger Clawson's formal report at April 1906 conference was the first given to the public since 1884. In 1915 the Auditing Committee's report showed for the first time how tithing had been disbursed, and Smith explained his motive plainly: 'Now I am taking a liberty that has not been indulged in very much: but there have been so many false charges made against me and against my brethren by ignorant and evilly disposed people, that I propose to make a true statement which will, I believe, at least have a tendency to convince you that we are trying to do our duty the best we know how.'15 Brunson reads this correctly as pragmatic rather than doctrinal: disclosure existed to answer criticism and shore up trust, not because anyone believed it was commanded.
By 1923 Heber J. Grant was introducing the report as 'customary.' Under J. Reuben Clark in the 1940s it reached its fullest form — several printed pages, budget appropriations set against actual expenditures, itemized by mission work, education, welfare, hospitals, temple maintenance, genealogy and administration, with the salaries of headquarters employees blended together. Marion G. Romney called the 1944 report more comprehensive than any financial report given in his lifetime.16 Thousands of members sat through ten minutes or more of figures. One thing was never disclosed in any year: revenue. The Church never said how much tithing it received, what its schools earned in tuition, or what its businesses returned — only fast-offering receipts, and only from 1942 to 1950.
1959
The retreat was gradual and then final. In April 1952 McKay ended Clark's seven-year run of reading the report; the duty passed to Joseph Anderson, and the format reverted from budget-versus-actual tables to bare categories. In 1953 the separate line items for the Office of the Corporation of the President and the Office of the Presiding Bishopric were folded into 'Administrative Expenses.'17 At April conference 1959, Anderson read the expenditures of the Church for 1958. It was the last time.18 Quinn transcribed the whole thing: it opens 'For Missions and Missionary Work... $13,034,893,' with an estimated $4,990,000 more paid by missionaries themselves, and totals, in 2010 dollars, $548,869,067.20.
What happened next explains the silence. The Church had been running into trouble even before the report: in mid-1956 it lost a million dollars of tithing funds invested in municipal bonds, and reinvested two-thirds of Church income in the same instruments anyway. Henry D. Moyle was appointed second counselor in June 1959, two months after the last report, took direction of Church finances with McKay's encouragement, set aside the current budget and launched a large expansion of spending, especially on buildings. By the end of 1959 the Church had spent $8 million more than it received — against a $7 million surplus the year before.19 Because the last published report had included the building program, Quinn writes, Moyle persuaded McKay not to publish even an abbreviated accounting. In April 1962 the Auditing Committee's public reports stopped noting whether the Church was carrying debt at all.
The crisis deepened before it broke: a $32 million deficit in 1962, and by early 1963 financial officers worried they could not meet payroll. McKay reassigned N. Eldon Tanner to the problem, and within two decades Tanner had made Church headquarters a financial power with substantial investment and business income. The Church's own current account of this period says it 'strengthened its financial plan, limited expenses, and set aside a portion of the donations it received,' which repaid the debts and gradually built a reserve. It does not mention the end of disclosure.
What replaced the reports is what members hear today: a one-page letter read each April by the managing director of the Church Auditing Department, stating that the department is independent, that it has performed audits, and that in its opinion contributions received, expenditures made and assets of the Church were recorded and administered in accordance with approved budgets and accounting practices. It contains no figures of any kind.20
The corporate church
What grew in the silence was a corporate structure. Most of the Church's for-profit businesses sit under Deseret Management Corporation, the holding company that has controlled Bonneville's broadcasting stations, the Deseret News, and other media; Quinn notes that KIRO-Television in Seattle alone had income of $10 million in 1994.21 AgReserves Inc., once called Deseret Farms of California and also known as the Berberian Nut Company, was described as the largest producer of nuts in the San Joaquin Valley; Property Reserve manages real estate across the country; Deseret Ranches in Florida runs cattle on an immense scale. In February 1978, apparently in response to public disclosure of the Deseret Trust Company's holdings, headquarters issued a press release concluding that 'The Church does not own, nor does it seek, controlling interest in any major national company.'
The most visible project was City Creek Center, announced in 2006 and opened on 22 March 2012 across the street from the Salt Lake Temple, financed entirely by the Church at a cost contemporary reporting put between $1.5 billion and about $2 billion. Keith B. McMullin, then heading Deseret Management, told Bloomberg the mall existed to combat urban blight rather than to fill Church coffers: 'Will there be a return? Yes, but so modest that you would never have made such an investment.' The center generated roughly $200 million in sales in nine months and was credited with 2,000 jobs and 16 million downtown visitors.22
It also produced the sentence that would be litigated for a decade. In April 2003 Hinckley told general conference that 'tithing funds have not and will not be used to acquire this property. Nor will they be used in developing it for commercial purposes,' and that funds would come instead from commercial entities owned by the Church 'together with the earnings of invested reserve funds.'23 Whether earnings on invested tithing are tithing is the whole argument. The Church holds that principal and earnings are distinct. Nielsen swore that at Ensign Peak everyone 'referred to and revered all funds of EPA as "tithing" money, regardless of whether they were referring to principal or earnings on that principal.'24
The whistleblower
On 21 November 2019 the IRS received a confidential whistleblower complaint from David A. Nielsen, a former senior portfolio manager at Ensign Peak Advisors, alleging that the Church had amassed about $100 billion in accounts intended for charitable purposes, that leaders had misled members by stockpiling surplus donations rather than spending them on charitable works, and that tax-exempt donations had been used to prop up two businesses.25 Nielsen's twin brother Lars, who had helped him assemble the filing over ten-hour days on a project they called 'the Mormon Giga-church,' gave a 74-page synopsis to reporters. Religion Unplugged published on 16 December; the Washington Post published on 17 December.
The First Presidency answered the same day: 'We take seriously the responsibility to care for the tithes and donations received from members. The vast majority of these funds are used immediately to meet the needs of the growing Church... Over many years, a portion is methodically safeguarded through wise financial management and the building of a prudent reserve for the future. This is a sound doctrinal and financial principle taught by the Savior in the Parable of the Talents... Claims being currently circulated are based on a narrow perspective and limited information. The Church complies with all applicable law governing our donations, investments, taxes, and reserves.'26
Two months later, on 14 February 2020, Ensign Peak filed its first consolidated Form 13F, disclosing nearly $38 billion in stocks and mutual funds at year-end 2019 — about $1.5 billion each in Apple and Microsoft, $930 million in Google, $855 million in Amazon. No earlier filings under its own name appeared on the SEC website. The same week, the Presiding Bishopric granted a rare interview in which they said the Church now provided nearly $1 billion a year in combined humanitarian and welfare aid, doubled over five years, alongside 30,000 congregations and more than 200 temples. 'It's no surprise we are talking about billions of dollars,' Caussé said.27
Thirteen shell companies
On 21 February 2023 the Securities and Exchange Commission announced charges against Ensign Peak for failing to file Forms 13F from 1997 through 2019 and for misstating information on those it did file, and against the Church for causing those violations. According to the order, the Church was concerned that disclosure of its portfolio — which by 2018 had grown to approximately $32 billion — would lead to negative consequences, and so, with the Church's knowledge and approval, Ensign Peak created thirteen shell LLCs, ostensibly located across the United States, and filed in their names. Ensign Peak retained investment discretion over all the securities. Ensign Peak paid a $4 million penalty; the Church paid $1 million.28
The Church's statement was short. Since 2000, it said, Ensign Peak had received and relied upon legal counsel about how to comply while maintaining the privacy of the portfolio, and had established separate companies that each filed rather than filing one aggregated report. It believed all securities required to be reported were included. The SEC first expressed concern in June 2019, at which point Ensign Peak adjusted its approach. 'We affirm our commitment to comply with the law, regret mistakes made, and now consider this matter closed.'29
The two readings diverge immediately. FAIR notes there was no allegation that the Church hid investments or that the shell companies were illegal, only that entities under Ensign Peak's control should have filed jointly.30 The Widow's Mite Report reads the order's paragraphs against the Church's statement and finds the account incomplete: the order is silent on nothing, it says, but the Church's statement is silent on the decision to make false statements on the forms and on the total failure to file anything before 2003. The order, it observes, uses the word 'clone' thirty-six times and 'shell' not once, while the press release uses 'shell' five times and 'clone' none — the mark of a negotiated document. It counts 268 filings from 2003 to 2019 containing over 650,000 instances of misstated key information, each signed under an attestation that the contents were true, correct and complete. It notes that the Church Auditing Department raised flags in 2014 and 2017 but did not follow through, and that two shell-LLC 'business managers' resigned in 2018 rather than continue — after which two new ones were found.31
What a full tithe costs
None of this changed what is asked of a member. A temple recommend requires a declaration of a full tithe, settled once a year in an interview with the bishop — an occasion Church leaders describe as a blessing for both parties. The definition has not been elaborated since a First Presidency letter of 19 March 1970: 'the simplest statement we know of is that statement of the Lord himself that the members of the Church should pay one-tenth of all their INTEREST annually, which is understood to mean income. NO ONE IS JUSTIFIED IN MAKING ANY OTHER STATEMENT THAN THIS,' with each member entitled to make his own decision. Whether that means gross or net is left to the member; critics note the ambiguity lets the Church require a full tithe for temple entry without defending a number.32
The teaching about poverty is explicit and old. Joseph F. Smith told April 1900 conference about driving the team when his widowed mother took her best potatoes to the tithing office in a scarce year, and a clerk came out and said, 'Widow Smith, it's a shame that you should have to pay tithing,' and chided her.33 The story has been retold from the pulpit ever since. In April 2005, Lynn G. Robbins put the principle without softening: 'One reason the Lord illustrates doctrines with the most extreme circumstances is to eliminate excuses. If the Lord expects even the poorest widow to pay her mite, where does that leave all others who find that it is not convenient or easy to sacrifice? No bishop, no missionary should ever hesitate or lack the faith to teach the law of tithing to the poor.'34 In October 2023, eight months after the SEC settlement, Neil L. Andersen told conference that 'The world speaks of tithing in terms of our money, but the sacred law of tithing is principally a matter of our faith.'
It is that juxtaposition, more than any legal finding, that carries the argument. Jana Riess, a believing member, wrote that her faith in the institution was damaged when she learned the extent of the wealth, and that she now pays her ten percent to charities that disclose where the money goes. The Church's answer is that the reserve is not a hoard but a hedge — Bednar's observation that the assets are primarily income-consuming, not income-producing, and that 'it would be imprudent and unwise not to have a reserve.'35 The Widow's Mite contributors, who want disclosure and are not critics of the faith, model the Church at more than $200 billion today with a trillion possible by 2044, and say plainly that they believe the benefits of transparency would greatly outweigh the costs.
What the courts settled, and what they did not
James Huntsman sued in March 2021 for the return of more than $5 million in tithing, alleging fraud under California law: that he had relied on the Church's representations that tithing would not finance commercial projects, when tithing had in fact gone to City Creek and to the Beneficial Life bailout. His complaint repeated allegations of $1.4 billion for the mall and $594 million for the insurer.36 Judge Stephen V. Wilson granted summary judgment to the Church in September 2021, holding that no reasonable jury could find the statements false — while rejecting the Church's argument that the First Amendment barred the suit outright.
A three-judge Ninth Circuit panel reversed in part in August 2023, reviving the City Creek claim and denying the Church's request to seal the financial portions of the opinion. The Church sought and obtained en banc review; the panel opinion was vacated. An eleven-judge en banc panel then unanimously agreed with the district court and dismissed the case in a 63-page set of rulings — the second dismissal in four years — with commentators noting the ruling's likely persuasive weight over further tithing cases pending in the Tenth Circuit. The Church welcomed the ruling, saying tithing donations are sacred and are dedicated to advancing its mission.
So the legal question is answered: a member cannot recover tithing on a fraud theory, and civil courts will not adjudicate how a church spends what it receives. The other question is untouched. The Church published its accounts for forty-five years because a president decided that answering critics was worth the exposure, and stopped when a counselor decided that a deficit was worth concealing. Nothing in the doctrine required either choice. That is what makes the transparency question a moral one rather than a legal one, and it is why it will not close with the docket.