Quote:
Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame
I don't know if any public funds were put into this thing, but I'll take my tax dollars into designer bridges over religious grandeur 10 times out of 10 thank you very much.
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Technically no, but tax free donations paid for it. Here are some really rough numbers that I am just guessing on:
Since the money all comes from tithing, which is 10% of the income of the people of the church, which they don't pay taxes on. Assume that an average of 30-40k per person since LDS women often don't work outside the home, then $3-4k a year of untaxed money is earned by each adult member. There are 20 buildings in Calgary, each with about 100-150 tax paying individuals that attend that building (and pay tithing), which means there is about 2-3000 people who have contributed, at $3-4k of untaxed money, so about $600k to $1.2 million od total income that is untaxed. Tax rate for people earning that much money is what 30%, so $180k - $360k money that was NOT paid in taxes by LDS people.
Now consider that the LDS church has 20 buildings to pay for and maintain in Calgary, activities for all the stuff they do, world wide humanitarian stuff, sending missionaries all over the world etc etc, not much more than 10% of the money they take in could go directly into building temples. This number is probably way to big, but lets be conservative. That means $18k-$36k of Calgary taxpayer money per year was lost due to the building of LDS temples.
So yes, taxpayers spent money on it, but I imagine the financial benefit to the city in visitors would easily outweigh that, or put a good dent in it at minimum.