🙂

Yeah, and who wants to be “that one”? But you can tell all the SO members want to go into the winning valence, which is the IAS registrars, so they all become like Charmaigne or worse.

Whatever. The church was not going to win in court — see Hernandez v. Commissioner. The deductability of donations had already been determined to be a quid pro quo by the US Supreme Court. No court could overturn that.

Go on fighting your weird word battles with yourself. I don’t have time for them.

Also how could the IRS have lost a huge amount of revenue if the Church continued it’s appeal and gained its 501ciii status as a religion under the First?

Also as I said tax protesting is considered a civil offense unless it includes tax *evasion* is not.

http://albinet.com/articles/offshore-company/taxes

Mike,

You obviously didn’t read my comment.

Like I said, I am not going to get into this as I don’t have time. I was merely commenting that the conclusion that the church became an “arm of the IRS” is disingenuous. In terms of revenue, the IRS lost a huge amount of income. Tell the people who have gone to prison for tax evasion that it is just a civil matter.

Mike,

Never considered the full tilt overdrive toward donations that occurred after the deal to be any kind of “victory”.

Nor do I agree that asking the public whether they paid their taxes or not should be part of eligibility.

BTW refusal to pay taxes as in the case of Thoreau for example is not a felony it is considered a civil offense in most cases unless it includes the actual *crime* of Tax Evasion.

So how could you call these people felons?

You write about how the Church “benefitted” which was really no benefit at all as far as I’m concerned and actually paved the way for financial irregs on steroids.

But you don’t say anything about how the IRS benefitted in the deal by eliminating CATS and the Fair Tax movement basically in one fell swoop.

Not going to get into any long debate with you on this one Robin. The CTCC was a requirement of the IRS, but it only lasted 5 years. And as for the “tax protesters” I had to deal with a bunch of those nutjobs — the “sovereign citizens” who do not believe there is any such thing as the United States. In fact, a number of them sued me personally. Those people were kept off the lines (that “PR” in Las Vegas that planned to kill the cop was one of them as I recall). It was ALWAYS policy to not have people who committed felonies (or lesser criminal offences) on service without it being handled. That did not change with the IRS exemption.

What DID change, and why it was such a “victory” was there was no longer ANY oversight over the church finances. As long as the church was not exempt there were reporting requirements and potential litigation with the IRS that could get ALL finance records. THIS is what the most significant victory was and why it gave Miscavige carte blanche.

And the outstanding assessments at the time were in excess of a billion dollars. CSC ended up paying $12.5 million. No other church entity paid anything. CSC was a disaster due to massive inurement to LRH and the set up of the “Religious Research Foundation” to which tens of millions had been funneled. Don’t know how you translate this into a “loss” and “admitting defeat” as that is about 1%…

It also increased the “donations” dramatically as a result of them being deductible — that only helped the church and Miscavige. It was the start of the vulture culture.

Val,

Actually it’s worse than that. According to the Secret Closing Agreement:
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Secrets/irs-closing.html

The CTCC for Church Tax Compliance Committee of which Miscavige is the Chairman of ensures that all Scientology “entities” conform with the Tax Code and pay their taxes over and above any possible deductions for services etc meaning that they now include questions in their sec checks to weed out any possible tax protesters and those who tend to avoid (which is different from “evade”) paying taxes, etc. which in effect has turned the Church of Scientology into a Tax Enforcement agency and Miscavige basically into a revenue agent.

That and the fact that along with the so called “Tax Break” has pretty much been eclipsed by the increase in prices for those same services by a factor of in some cases of 150% making it really not much of a deal when you can deduct only 40% off.

In other words the so called “glorious” “victory” over the IRS is nothing but a sham.

BTW the Church also had to admit defeat in regard to taxes owed which were being appealed prior to the agreement and pay them.

Not only that but it is not the Religion of Scientology but the “Scientology Religion” albeit a subtle difference which allows for alteration of the subject as you can and have seen.

In other words the Secret Closing Agreement is a deep dark rabbit hole in my opinion since unlike other 501ciii entities it has to ensure that it’s clientele are abiding by the Tax Code.

You don’t see that with any other Tax Exempt organizations such as the Cato Institute or the Ford Foundation etc.

Which is why in my opinion it is such a “sell out”.

Odd,

That was very interesting. So is Scn in a dark ages period now after only being around 60 years or so? It’s barely gotten off the ground.

As populations converted to Christianity from paganism, they did so under the rule of the Kings who led the way. Charlemagne being a prime example of this. Religion became a way to civilize the populace and get people under control so they could be ruled and out of the practice of tribalism, which challenged ruling authority.

Although Christianity certainly struggled in its early days (the first several hundred years), it never became a real power until it was adopted by the rulers of the time, who then decreed that their people had to convert and practice the new faith.

I don’t see this ever happening with Scientology. We are in a different day and age and our political leaders will probably never be Scientologists. They would never get elected in the first place.

I get what you said about the concept of “eternity” being a product but a little unclear about what is your prediction for Scn. Also, hasn’t the promise of eternity and total spiritual freedom always been a “product” in Scientology, when its been based on statistics and gross income?