The institution

The Money

An estimated $100 billion reserve, thirteen LLCs, an SEC penalty, and no itemized report to members since 1959.

The point in one sentence

The Church asks members for a tenth of their income as a condition of temple access, yet it has shown them no itemized financial report since 1959, built a reserve estimated at over 100 billion dollars, and in 2023 settled an SEC order finding that its senior leaders approved using thirteen LLCs (separate legal entities) to file its investment reports so as to avoid disclosing the amount and nature of its assets.

How the money arrives

If you grew up in the Church, you were taught that tithing is a commandment and that a full tithe is ten percent of your income. Start there, because the size of the reserve only means something next to what members are asked to give. It is not a suggestion: temple access, which the faith teaches is required to be with your family forever, runs through a recommend interview that asks whether you are a full-tithe payer, and members meet with their bishop each year for a tithing declaration. The Church’s handbook says “All members who have income should pay tithing,” and a General Conference talk applies that to families with almost none, in these words:

Hold that sentence, a family choosing tithing over food, next to everything below. Read whole, the talk says to pay first and that the bishop can then help with food, and the Church’s welfare system is real. The question this page keeps asking is about the order of those two things, and about what members are shown of the money.

What tithing requires, and how it is checked

The rule, the yearly check and the gate are all written down by the Church, so there is no need to infer any of it. The rule is in the General Handbook:

The yearly check is the tithing declaration, in section 34.3.1.2. The Church describes it as an invitation, with a friendly purpose. The bishop “meets with each member during the last few months of each year to receive his or her tithing declaration,” and all members are invited to meet with him to:

• “Declare to the bishop their status as tithe payers.”
• “Ensure their contribution records are accurate.”

The bishop, the handbook adds, “expresses appreciation to members for their faithfulness” and “encourages members to give a generous fast offering.” So each member’s giving is recorded, and each member states, once a year, whether they are a tithe payer. The record runs in one direction.

What the recommend opens is spelled out in section 27.3.4, on who may attend a temple sealing, the ceremony that joins a couple for eternity: “Accountable members must be endowed and have a current temple recommend to attend.” The Church names the cost itself, in section 27.3. Civil marriages followed by a sealing are a pattern that “may also be followed when a temple marriage could cause parents or immediate family members to feel excluded because they cannot attend the temple ceremony.” Until May 2019 that pattern carried a cost: couples who married civilly had to wait a year before being sealed. Church News reported that leaders “discontinued a policy Monday morning requiring couples who marry civilly to wait one year before being married or sealed in the temple” (Church News). That helped. It did not change the gate on the sealing itself.

Does paying it end poverty?

The Church’s teaching on tithing includes the promise that it provides. The Robbins talk quotes President Hinckley: “If they would pay their tithing, they would always have food on their tables, they would always have clothing on their backs, and they would always have a roof over their heads.” A 2024 peer-reviewed economics paper tested a county-level version of that promise:

The exhibits

The reserve, next to the requirement

Put the two ends side by side. The temple recommend interview asks whether you are a full-tithe payer, and the handbook rule covers every member who has income. A General Conference talk teaches that even a destitute family should pay tithing, with the bishop helping afterward with food. Meanwhile the Church built a reserve estimated past 100 billion dollars, has not itemized its finances to members since 1959, and settled an SEC order over how it reported its holdings.

The common rebuttals

“It is a rainy day fund. Any responsible institution saves for hard times.”

Saving is reasonable in principle, and nobody was penalized for saving. The Church’s own account is that it wanted the portfolio kept private and took legal advice on how. Here is what that answer has to explain. The SEC order says the Church “was concerned that disclosure of the assets in the name of Ensign Peak, a known Church affiliate, would lead to negative consequences in light of the size of the Church’s portfolio,” and that it approved using other entities to file instead. Saving needs no filing structure built to avoid disclosure. The rainy day answer explains the fund. It does not by itself explain why the Church’s leadership approved a structure to avoid disclosing the amount and nature of the fund, and that is the part of the story The Shell Companies sets out.

“It was a paperwork violation, not fraud. Nobody was stolen from.”

Correct, and worth stating plainly: this was a disclosure violation, not embezzlement, and the order makes no finding that money was misused. What it does find is that the forms, filed in the names of LLCs, misstated who held investment and voting discretion over the securities (who decided what to buy, sell and vote), and that the Church’s senior leadership approved the structure, at several points over the years, in order to avoid disclosing the amount and nature of its assets. The order does not find that anyone meant to break the law, and the Church says it relied on counsel. The point that remains is smaller than “fraud” and larger than “paperwork”: the institution that asks each member for an honest tithing declaration chose, by the SEC’s account, not to show the public how much it held.

“The Church does enormous good. Over a billion dollars a year in humanitarian aid.”

It does, and that deserves its full weight with nothing subtracted. Then look at the proportions. About $1.6 billion in 2025, by the Church’s own count, for welfare, self-reliance, humanitarian aid, emergency relief and volunteer service, against roughly seven billion a year collected in tithing and a reserve past a hundred billion, means that spending is under two percent of the reserve alone. And whatever the true ratio is, members cannot check it, because the books have been closed since 1959. A defense that comes down to “trust us” is hard to hold when the books are closed and the SEC found that the Church’s leaders approved a filing structure to avoid disclosing the amount and nature of its assets.

“Tithing is about faith, not about the Church needing the money.”

As theology, this is coherent, and many members find real meaning in the sacrifice. But notice what it concedes: if the Church does not need the money, then the requirement exists for its effect on the giver, and the effect lands hardest on the people with the least. The talk quoted at the top of this page tells a destitute family to pay tithing rather than eat, adds that the bishop can then help with food, and tells bishops to ask the needy for tithing first. A Church with a reserve estimated past a hundred billion dollars, teaching that, while giving its members no itemized books, is the complete picture. The faith framing does not change it.

Where some of it goes: land

The Church’s explanation comes first. In December 2019 the First Presidency said that “over many years, a portion is methodically safeguarded through wise financial management and the building of a prudent reserve for the future,” and called this “a sound doctrinal and financial principle taught by the Savior in the Parable of the Talents” (First Presidency statement). The Church says its large investments are made with returns on that reserve, not with current tithing.

Some of what that reserve buys is public. In October 2024 a Church nonprofit, Farmland Reserve, Inc., bought 46 farms covering 41,554 acres in eight states for $289 million, according to the seller’s filing with the SEC (SEC filing). A Nebraska Public Media analysis of farmland sales from 2018 to 2022 found a Church-tied nonprofit was the single biggest buyer of farmland by acreage in that state.

None of this is illegal, and a reserve that owns productive land is not a scandal in itself. The question is the same one this page asks throughout. Members are asked to give a tenth of their income, sometimes before food, and they cannot see how much of it becomes land, buildings and stock, because the Church has not published its finances to its members since 1959.

What the courts decided

Several members sued, saying they were misled about how tithing was used. None has won, and it matters exactly why.

• James Huntsman said tithing was used for the City Creek mall in Salt Lake City and to rescue an insurance company. In January 2025 the en banc Ninth Circuit ruled for the Church. The main opinion found no evidence the Church “did anything other than what it said it would do”: President Hinckley had said tithing would not fund the project but that earnings on invested reserve funds would, and the Church had long said those reserves include tithing. The court did not decide that the First Amendment bars such suits; five of eleven judges would have said it does (opinion).
• Laura Gaddy and two other plaintiffs brought racketeering claims over both Church history and tithing. In August 2025 the Tenth Circuit held that courts cannot decide whether the Church’s history claims are true, and that the tithing claims failed because the plaintiffs did not plead that they relied on the Church’s statements when they kept paying; it did not decide whether the First Amendment would bar those claims. The Supreme Court declined to hear it in March 2026, which is not a ruling on the merits (opinion).
• A class action by tithe-payers was dismissed, and in August 2026 the Tenth Circuit affirmed because it was filed too late: the court said members should have known from the national news coverage of the December 2019 whistleblower report. It did not reach the merits (opinion).

So the Church won each of these three, and it is fair to say so. But read what the courts held. One found no evidence the Church’s statements were false. One found the plaintiffs did not plead that they relied on the statements, and that courts will not judge religious truth. One found the members waited too long. None decided whether the Church was open about what it held. The only official finding on disclosure is the SEC order, which found that the Church’s senior leadership approved using thirteen LLCs to file its stock-holdings reports, to avoid disclosing the amount and nature of its assets. The Church and Ensign Peak settled without admitting or denying the findings.

What this means

Strip it to the two ends of the pipe. At one end, a family that cannot afford both tithing and dinner is taught, from the pulpit, to pay the tithing, because temple access and their family’s eternity run through that ten percent. At the other end, the institution receiving it built one of the largest investment funds on earth, stopped showing its members the books in 1959, and settled an SEC order finding that its leadership approved a structure of thirteen LLCs to avoid disclosing the amount and nature of its assets.

Members account to the Church for their tithing every year. The Church has not accounted to its members since 1959.

The main facts above come from the SEC order and the Church’s own words: its response to the order, the conference talk, the handbook and the filing record. The question this page leaves is the one the tithing declaration asks, turned around: an honest tithe is demanded of the member, to the dollar. What would an honest accounting, in the other direction, look like, and why has there not been one in your lifetime?