Church & Stupid

Leave it to the Japanese to create a tax-dodge so elaborate it dwarfs anything that America's creative accountants ever came up with. I read through this article twice, and still don't understand exactly what was going on. It doesn't help that the journalists telling this story essentially tell it backwards: Religious Group Hid Love Hotel Income

A religious corporation that operates "love hotels" concealed 1.4 billion yen in income over seven years through February 2008 as tax-exempt donations from amorous couples, sources said.

The Kanto-Shinetsu Regional Taxation Bureau has ordered Uchu Shinri Gakkai (Space truth academic society) to pay 300 million yen in back taxes and penalties.

Uchu Shinri Gakkai, based in Tadotsu, Kagawa Prefecture, has filed an objection to the order.

"We actually send money to needy children in the country. We'll fight the tax authorities," said the 46-year-old president of a company in Chikuma, Nagano Prefecture, that processes and sells mushrooms and vegetables.

The love hotels are apparently run by a 71-year-old former president of the company.

Uchu Shinri Gakkai appears to be a religious organization in name only. The vegetable company apparently used the name of Uchu Shinri Gakkai to win tax breaks offered to religious groups, including tax exemptions on donations.

So what we have here is a vegetable processor set up its own religion (the Space Truth Academic Society) to obtain tax exemptions, and then used their religious status to operate a couple dozen "love hotels." And then hid the income from the hotels. I ask you, are there any "Benedict Arnold CEO's" in the United States who would come up with such a daffily elaborate scam?

The best part: the reporters are focusing on the propriety of the "religious group" hiding donations, rather than the propriety of an agricultural concern concocting a fake religion to operate a sexy side business.