Honestly, Mick, I wish somebody WOULD blow up Central Headquarters!

When they opened SuMP, he kept basically saying, “this is it, we did it!” If you had put money into this thing, and heard that message, in most any other context, a follow up for more money would be a major gut punch.

The only explanation I can summon is that perhaps zombies are real, and they happen to be wealthy scientologists.

If someone has an encounter with a scientologist, and there is an attempt to bite you, beware. OT IX might be “Full realization of undead powers”.

Nice to meet you Jens (as opposed to encountering you..!). How I miss those protests! Although, personally, they never made any difference to me (which is why I’ve never followed suit). It was more what was going on inside that triggered my departure (and of course all of my own crimes, ptsness and mu’s!)

Hi Paul,

We met (or, more precisely, encountered each other) a few times back when you were in and I was protesting London Foundation semi-regularly.

I’m glad you called bullshit on it 🙂

‘Do it right the first time.’ Where have I heard that before? This was heavily stressed just prior to the London ‘ideal org’ renovations. Not more than just a year after the grand opening (and coincidentally right after a DM walk-through) the entire first floor – the Div 6 A area – was ripped out and redone. Someone had apparently overlooked the complete lack of marble flooring throughout (and the gross omission of a 5ft embedded brass Scn logo at the entrance) during the initial renos, as well as the 2 intro film rooms being at the wrong end of the floor (obviously) and then of course the LRH exhibit which was taking up way too much space.
But fortunately DM spotted all of this (although, rather conveniently, not til his second visit) and for the following 6 months London org was left with no intro facilities whatsoever (if you can ignore the fact that even with everything in place, it makes hardly any difference anyway as there has virtually been no 6A activity in that place in the 10 years since its opening.)
A year later (and again, quelle surprise, right after another DM visitation) the entire glass partitioning on the 2nd floor was now deemed to be in breach of health and safety laws (!) and needed to be replaced with identical looking stuff – which it was.
I was amongst the many volunteers on the original renos cycle and recall helping lug these mothers up to the second floor in the early hours of the morning. There were around 20 of them and each one measured at least 13ft by 5ft. It took at least 6 of us over 2 hours to gingerly navigate each one up the 2 floors from from the street.
So imagine the surprise (and minor irritation) at learning it had been a complete waste of time and effort, based upon nothing more than DM’s OT abilities to perceive an inherent risk in them, threatening the safety of all 10 people passing by them each day – that’s how much he cares! (The course rooms they enclosed had been similarly pretty much empty up to that time……but since the glass was changed they had immediately filled up to breaking point…….No, wait, of course they hadn’t.)
I find it hard to believe that I was the only one calling bullshit at the time – albeit quietly.
I heard since my departure that the carpets throughout had also been ripped out and changed for more standard ones, something that brought some expressed disgruntlement from some, so perhaps not after all.
It dawns on me that this seems to be a clue as to his modus operandi with regards fulfilling the IRS requirements, not unsimilar to a local council directing funds into superfluous reparation projects purely for the purpose of meeting dedicated annual budgets.
Don’t always get time to comment, Mike, but always find time to read the posts, which are as ever extraordinarily well written, insightful and relevant, as are those from all your contributors, chiefly RB and TC. Keep it up.

Peace, I’m not either. However, I would bet a substantial sum that the IRS won’t get them (in ANY meaningful way) for inurement or private bene. 1) Statute limitations on most known examples. 2) Leeway given to other religious leaders in the USA by IRS. 3) Difficulty in evidence. 4) The refund policy has been ruled legal by a court already. So, not likely IRS will go against the court ruling.

The most likely chink in the armor is that they provide no public benefit for the tax exemption. That is what I was told by an Ex IRS regional auditing supervisor.

Mike, I’m not a tax lawyer, but I think I can speak to a couple of things, including that it is not so much that there are detailed regs, as that there are general principles such as “inurement” and “private benefit” which are not totally prohibited but may not be “substantial”. It’s a judgment call, leaving the question of at what point the IRS is going to make the call or compelled to examine the situation.

Another major aspect is that the CofS’ tax compliance requirements are determined in part by the 1993 agreement. They are probably in violation of multiple provisions of the agreement including most obviously one where they agreed to make “fair” refunds for monies on account through a process that is supposed to involve a simple request.

I think that some inquiry like an audit is going to be the first step in the process that might ultimately lead to the CofS losing its tax exemption, and that the process might itself reveal damaging information but it is likely to be lengthy. The other thing is that the IRS exemption included provisions such as the unique tax exemption for all “fixed donations” for services that are probably not actually legal for the IRS to make, and that most likely would be thrown out if someone sued the IRS about it.

MW – Spot on. IRS regs are clear on how much cash a non-profit can hold. Scn can mitigate exposure to exemption review by putting up ‘spiritual’ centers, facilities, orgs, ranches, etc. And, they must offer a certain availability to the community. However, there is nothing in the regs that says people must attend or take advantage of the offer of open use. After all, Scn can’t force people to be there, (can they?).

For the Community, they could open up SuMP as a public parking lot and rake in ‘donations’ that way.

That was me, Brian. I didn’t have anything better to do….