Kris Jenner Founded A Church With A $1000 A Month Membership And Theorists Think It’s Secret Tax Haven
This is how the rich stay rich.
California Community Church / Featureflash Photo Agency / Shutterstock.com Theorists online are taking a fresh look at Kris Jenner's church and how she could be using it to keep even more wealth in the Kardashian family accounts.
In June 2008, Jenner helped found the “California Community Church,” which sits as a non-profit charity that requires members to pay $1,000 a month and tithe 10% of their income as donations to the church.
Considering how much the public knows about the Kardashian/Jenner lifestyle, it came as a big surprise to find out that they had decided to quietly open a church.
However, it’s much less of a surprise when you realize that the whole thing might just be a tax write-off so that the Kardashians/Jenners can save their money.
Is Kris Jenner's church a tax haven?
Churches that practice tithing have bad reputations to begin with — asking your members to pay you money to “show your faith in God as a provider” isn’t the religious excuse you think it is.
A 10% reduction of someone like Kim Kardashian’s income is around $5 to $6 million a year, all going to the church that’s co-founded by her mother.
Not only that, but members are paying $1,000 a month just to be members — and it's unclear where that money goes.
A look at their church website shows that they have programs for kids, teenagers, and adults, and from the pictures, it looks like they take trips and do fun activities with the kids — but nothing that could possibly cost millions of dollars a year.
Rich people are constantly playing the game of how to avoid the most taxes — sometimes paying none at all and then refusing to show your taxes when you’re the president of the United States.
California Community Church donations could be a tax write-off.
One of the ways these rich people do that is through charitable donations. Basically, if you donate enough money to charity, you could reduce the amount of taxes you pay up to 60% — or 100% if you pay in cash.
Guess what counts as a charity? That’s right, the California Community Church.
So not only is Kardashian likely getting out of paying taxes through these “tithes,” but she’s also giving that money to her mother who literally owns the church.
There’s something else in the law of the tax world that says churches are exempt from paying certain state and federal taxes, so long as they meet all of the requirements for tax exemption from the IRS — which they do.
However, that’s not something that’s entirely set in stone.
According to RadarOnline, on April 23, 2012, the Life Change Community Church (what the California Community Church was previously named) was hit with a lien for $1,601.93 in unpaid taxes covering the period of October 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011.
A few days later, they were hit with a second lien, this one for $2,012.82 in unpaid taxes.
This could likely be for two reasons — one being that they simply didn’t pay the taxes or forgot, and the other reason being that they weren’t paying their taxes related to payroll expenses.
Since the California Community Church doesn’t make any of their tax information public, it’s unknown how much of a return Jenner might actually be receiving, but the entire prospect of the situation is pretty shady, especially regarding the name change.
When the church first came to be, it was called Life Change Community Church and was given the shady status due to the controversy behind their lead pastor, Brad Johnson, as well as the well-known idea that rich people use charities to their advantage.
After it was revealed that the church had failed to pay their taxes and was audited by the IRS, they decided to change their name to explore “a new direction and vision.”
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Follow him on Twitter here.