The Mormon Church Is Quietly Expanding Its Real Estate Empire Across the US | Hacker News Reader

The Mormon Church Is Quietly Expanding Its Real Estate Empire Across the US

bloomberg.com

45 pointspetethomas6 comments

In my town, the Native American tribes have been granted a monopoly on casinos. I've been wondering how long before they start a real estate empire, accumulating land right off the edge of their reservation - slowly buying their historical land back. Given a few hundred years, they might regain all their land.

Have they been dna tested? My family came to this great country from England in the 1600s and the women in my family have been helping to keep the traditions of the Penobscot tribe alive because they’re such a spiritual people. White Indian women of faith don’t build casinos.

The tribe nearby (Coeur d'Alene tribe) has been doing exactly that. They are repurchasing reservation land which was sold off through the years.

Overall, from my observations through my life here the tribe's overall quality of life greatly improved in the last 30 years.

I'm waiting for a tribe to try the Restasis patent gag again in the current administration. Being First Nations myself I have a lot to say about this (extremely negative) but I'll bite my tongue in the audience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_St._Regis_Mohawk_Tribe_and...

They need to be taxed. Its crazy how we don't tax churches and then they can go around buying up assets until they own everything.

The US destroyed democracy with tax breaks that allow people and organizations to become rich enough to ignore laws.

We used to cap CEO wages with a 90% federal income tax bracket to limit their yearly income. That is what made college affordable, raised wages, ended outsourcing, enabled homeownership out of highschool, etc.

> They need to be taxed

> they can go around buying up assets until they own everything

The real estate transactions described in the article are purely income-generating rather than related to the mission of the church (e.g. for church buildings, temples); as such, any income from them is subject to income tax already under UBIT laws [1]. Same goes for local/state property taxes.

[1] https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/unrelated-business...

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