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Washington Publish, The IRS Simply Hiked Taxes on Personal Jet Flights. Pastors Are Not Excluded.:
In 2017, Texas-based televangelist Kenneth Copeland informed his followers he acquired a very particular message from the Holy Spirit: The Lord had put aside a luxurious Gulfstream V jet for his ministry’s use.
Copeland bought the jet — in money — from filmmaker Tyler Perry in November of that yr and shortly launched a celebratory video, together with a request for one more $2.5 million for upgrades.
Copeland is certainly one of a handful of prosperity gospel pastors who insist that jets are important to their ministry. …
These luxury-loving pastors — together with Creflo Greenback and Jesse Duplantis — might be doling out additional dough for private flights on ministry-owned plane, in line with a tax replace launched final month. Watchdog group Trinity Basis, which displays non secular fraud, reported final week that the Inner Income Service ramped up the tax fee for “noncommercial flights on employer-provided plane” taken between Jan. 1, 2023, and June 30, 2023. …
“To the extent that they take private flights on church-owned non-public jets, from a tax perspective, these flights will now be barely extra expensive to them,” defined Samuel Brunson, an affiliate dean at Loyola College in Chicago who researches faith and the tax system.
He added that whereas a tax-exempt group would usually need to report whether or not they use such flights on IRS Type 990, church buildings are exempt from submitting 990s, conserving the general public at midnight about whether or not they fly ministry-owned jets for private use.
That’s the place the Trinity Basis is available in. For many years, president Pete Evans has been monitoring ministry-owned jets, taking word after they’re flown for pleasure as a substitute of enterprise. In the present day, Trinity Basis employees investigator Barry Bowen retains every day tabs on televangelists’ non-public jets, posting screenshots of the flights on the @pastorplanes social media accounts.
“Relating to a few of the taxes that ought to be paid on private flights, we doubt that a few of these taxes are being paid,” Bowen mentioned by telephone from the muse’s workplace in Dallas. “A 990 will disclose in the event that they use non-public or constitution plane. However most televangelists don’t present that info to their donors, so we’re doing it for them.”
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https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2023/05/the-irs-just-hiked-taxes-on-private-jet-flights-pastors-are-not-excluded.html
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