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IRS and Scientology CHURCH STAFF AND MINISTERS USED TO ENFORCE IRS COMPLIANCE November 1997 An official Scientology document--recently uncovered by the Public Research Foundation--requires ministers and staff of every Scientology church and mission to enforce compliance to IRS regulations on individual parishoners. The document, a "Scientology Policy Directive" entitled "PERSONAL INCOME TAXES," is written by an unidentified "Tax Compliance Officer" for the Church of Scientology. In part, it says that a Scientologist who fails to comply with all IRS regulations "will be ineligible for Church services until the matter is rectified." To put teeth into the enforcement, the church Tax Directive goes so far as to threaten non-compliers with the loss of their religion. Ordering parishoners to abide by IRS edicts, the church Tax Directive concludes: "Who would want to risk his eternity for any amount of money?" A highly-placed church official named Lyman Spurlock confirmed that threat when he wrote to one parishoner who had challenged the constitutionality of the unholy church/state union:
And unfortunate it was: the parishoner that letter was addressed to was later expelled from the church when he wouldn't knuckle under. Lyman Spurlock, the author of the letter, is co-founder of Scientology's most powerful organization, a secretive corporation called the "Church of Spiritual Technology" (CST). But it was recently disclosed by the Public Research Foundation (Press Release: "HIDDEN TIES BETWEEN IRS AND SCIENTOLOGY REVEALED") that Spurlock's fellow co-founder of CST is former Assistant to the Commissioner of IRS, Meade Emory. Serious questions are being raised by many about what influence Emory might have had in the super-secret 1993 IRS tax exemption for CST and the lesser Scientology corporations. Aside from Spurlock--who is a CPA--Emory and the other co-founders and Special Directors of CST are not, themselves, Scientologists, but are tax and probate attorneys. Meade Emory was Assistant to IRS Commissioner Donald C. Alexander, whose reign began during Nixon's catastrophic last term. Before that, Emory was Legislation Counsel of the Joint Committee on Taxation of the U.S. Congress. CST--the all-powerful Scientology corporation that Emory helped to set up--operates almost invisibly behind the panoply of church corporations it controls, but exercises final authority over every copyright and trademark that has any connection with Scientology. Without CST's blessing, none of the junior corporations could operate at all. It is CST's corporate leverage over all of Scientology and over all Scientologists that makes the unprecedented church Tax Directives possible. Another Scientologist who was expelled on the strength of those church Tax Directives said, "This is the greatest outrage against religious freedoms since the American Revolution. If a church can use a parishoner's hope of salvation to make him kneel down before a vicious government agency, then the IRS can use ANY church to hound and threaten. Who's next for a 'Tax Compliance Officer?' The Baptists? The Catholics? Church and state are one now. My church IS the IRS." Said one tax-watcher, "This makes all Scientology organizations 'branch offices' of IRS, and every Scientology minister an agent of IRS--there to enforce compliance under the threat of eternal damnation. Why else would a church have a Tax Compliance Enforcement Officer? And what happens if a Scientology penitent needs to confess to his minister that he fudged somewhere on his taxes?" Others are asking why no one in any branch of government has done anything to force open the sealed, secret tax-exemption agreement between IRS and Scientology. On March 15, 1996, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler, in the case of TAX ANALYSTS v. INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (case No. 94-CV-00220 [TFH]), did order the IRS to release certain documents regarding the Scientology "closing agreement," but so far IRS has not even complied with the court order. In that case, Tax Analysts exposed several disturbing facts about the IRS/Scientology arrangement. Submissions to the court revealed, among other things, that the IRS's Exempt Organizations Technical Division had been "instructed not to review the exemption applications filed by the Church of Scientology and its affiliates for compliance with IRC 501(c)(3)." Who issued that strange order, and whether Meade Emory had any influence on that decision, is unknown. It is likely to remain unknown until sufficient public pressure is brought to bear on federal officials that the IRS/Scientology agreement is unsealed. Until then, for the first time in American history, adherents of a religion are being forced by their church to know and abide by the 6,000-page scripture of IRS, or be denied the right to the free exercise of their chosen religion. -END OF RELEASE- |