Church Gifts Televangelist a Gold-Plated Trump-Edition AR-15: Understanding Gift Tax Reporting Requirements

(Screenshot: YouTube channel TruthBacker)

Recently, Living Word Christian Church in LaCrosse WI, gifted Pastor Mark Barclay a gold-plated AR-15 engraved with President Donald Trump’s words, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

The gun given to Barclay may have cost between $1,330 to $1,700, according to the Black Rain Ordnance gun manufacturer website.

When American churches present gifts to pastors for their birthdays, during Pastor Appreciation Month (October) and when they retire, sometimes they are required to report these gifts as compensation.

(Screenshot: U.S. Code Title 26 Section 102)

Small gifts such as snacks and a T-shirt provided occasionally at work are considered de minimis, and not subject to taxation.

Meanwhile, gifts to non-employees are handled differently.

Some of the gifts to televangelists are very extravagant:

  • Paula White gave T.D. Jakes a Bentley convertible.
  • Oral Roberts gave fundraising consultant James Eugene Ewing an aircraft.
  • Creflo Dollar attempted to raise $2 million for Kenneth Copeland to celebrate Copeland’s 40th ministry anniversary.
  • Daystar Television Network’s only independent board member Tom Calendar gifted the network president Joni Lamb $100,000 for honeymoon, which she claims to have reimbursed.

The Danger of Tax Evasion

In 2011, the Senate Finance Committee published a 61-page report identifying financial loopholes exploited by religious organizations. One of the loopholes was pastors receiving “love offerings” rather than a salary so that their compensation was not taxed.

There also appears to be widespread confusion in the church world regarding speaking honorariums. They are often treated as gifts when they are compensation, and the recipient should be given a Form 1099 for tax purposes.

Televangelist Todd Coontz and Gregory L. Clarke, pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, both served jail time for tax evasion as a result of treating speaking honorariums as gifts rather than taxable income.

However, the courts are not always consistent. An indictment of the late televangelist Morris Cerullo was dismissed because a prosecutor failed to give the grand jury complete information.

Tax Notes reported, “During the prosecutor’s presentation, the grand jury asked at least three times about how to differentiate between earned income and gifts. Each time the prosecutor answered without mentioning the most critical factor: the donor’s intent.”

Reporting Requirements

For 2025, the gift tax exclusion is $19,000. With a couple exceptions, gifts exceeding this amount are taxable and require the donor to complete the IRS Form 709 and pay the gift tax.

Not subject to taxation are gifts to spouses and gifts to pay for school tuition or medical expenses.

While churches, synagogues and mosques are not required to report gift expenses to the Internal Revenue Service on a Form 990, other religious non-profits such as Christian colleges do include them in the 990 Statement of Expenses Page.

For the fiscal year ending June 30, 2023, Liberty University provided $341 million in grants and scholarships to its American students.

The IRS website features a Frequently Asked Questions page for gift taxes and the IRS Publication 559 provides more in-depth information about gift taxes for accountants and bookkeepers.

* This article features a correction. It originally incorrectly reported that Living Word Church in Midland, Michigan, gifted Pastor Mark Barclay a gold-plated AR-15. Instead, Living Word Christian Church in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, was responsible for the gun gift.

Searching for Tips: Know of Any Religious Leaders Committing Extortion?

This is an odd request. Trinity Foundation investigators are looking for tips.

Often religious leaders are accused of immoral actions which are not necessarily illegal. It is not a crime to waste millions of dollars on ministry-owned jets or massive parsonages.

However, we are also interested in documenting criminal actions, especially financial fraud and extortion. If a pastor or televangelist convinced you to give based on a false promise of financial blessings which you never received, let us know about it.

If you are aware of a pastor or ministry leader using threats/intimidation to obtain donations, contact us. For example, has a pastor told you that God would punish you if you didn’t give him a donation?

If you know about a megachurch taking over other churches through loan sharking techniques (charging large amounts of interest which could no longer be repaid), blackmail or bribery, please report it.

Whistleblower Form  Email: trinity@trinityfi.org Phone: (214)827-2625)

Investigation: Billionaire Televangelist’s Beach Condo for Sale, Wealthy Foreign Pastors Acquire American Real Estate

(Screenshot: Bishop Edir Macedo preaching from Portugal.)

The world’s wealthiest televangelist, billionaire Edir Macedo of Brazil, has listed his beach condo in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida, for sale. After a recent price reduction, Macedo is asking almost $14.6 million for the luxurious residence in the Porsche Design Tower.

Macedo’s neighbors have included Russian oligarchs, soccer player Lionel Messi, Columbian singer Maluma, Mexican actress/singer Thalía and Andrea Romanello Ferdinand, the daughter of Patrick Romanello, whom The New York Times reported was “alleged to be an associate of the Bonanno crime family.”

(Photo: Carl LenderCreative Commons License)

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Exploring Daystar Programming Partners: Guess Who Owns Six Square Miles of Land?

In addition to producing its own original programs such as Joni Table Talk and Ministry Now and broadcasting Christian movies on Saturdays, Daystar Television Network relies on 69 programming partners to fill its weekly broadcast schedule.

We were curious: How many of Daystar’s programming partners provide financial information to donors?

The following spreadsheet reveals which programming partners file an IRS Form 990 which discloses total revenue, total expenses, and compensation of officers. Unlike other non-profits, churches, synagogues and mosques are exempt from the requirement to file a Form 990.

One-third (23) of Daystar’s programming partners provide a Form 990, which was more than we expected.

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Televangelists and Pastor Entrepreneurs, Are You in Compliance? March 21st Deadline to Report Company Ownership to Feds

(Photo: Pixabay)

Update: After publication of this article, the Treasury Department announced it will only require foreign companies to disclose ownership in America and that owners of American companies will not be prosecuted for non-disclosure of beneficial ownership information.

After facing court challenges the 2021 Corporate Transparency Act, has gone into effect, requiring many owners of corporations, limited liability companies and sole proprietors to report beneficial ownership information (BOI) to the federal government.

But loopholes in the act have inadvertently made churches the ideal venue for international money laundering.

In prior years, law enforcement would complain about the difficulty of identifying the owners of companies because their names didn’t appear on corporate records.

For some companies, the only contact is a registered agent who doesn’t personally know their client. On other occasions the names of managers of limited liability companies (LLCs) and dummy directors of corporations appear on company registration documents rather than the owner.

This lack of corporate transparency protects terrorists, international money laundering, tax evasion, and drug smuggling.

Lack of Beneficial Ownership Hides Aircraft

When reporters Mark Smith and Tanya Eiserer of Dallas-based ABC affiliate WFAA discovered in 2019 that more than 1,000 aircraft were registered to two P.O. boxes in the small Texas town of Onalaska – which has no airport – they began to ask questions. It was, after all, more aircraft than are registered in either Seattle, San Antonio or New York City.

WFAA reported, “In 2008, a plane crashed into a home in Caracas, Venezuela, killing seven people. The pilot was a twice-convicted drug smuggler. The plane was registered in the United States to Aircraft Guaranty Corp. The company never identified the real owner.”

“There’s more: In 2013, a helicopter also registered to Aircraft Guaranty crashed into a golf course in Mexico.  ‘I was never able to find out the actual person who was responsible for that helicopter accident,’ said attorney Ladd Sanger, who represented the families of three of the five people killed in the crash.”

Continue reading “Televangelists and Pastor Entrepreneurs, Are You in Compliance? March 21st Deadline to Report Company Ownership to Feds”

In the News…

The Religion Business update: In November we reported on filmmaker Nathan Apffel’s arrest at televangelist Ed Young Jr.’s Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas, for trespassing. Apffel was standing on church property with a poster asking the question, “Ed, what’s your housing allowance today?” On February 25th, Apffel pled guilty and received a 90-day probation. The charge will be expunged from his record if Apffel doesn’t visit the church during the probation period.

Apffel’s seven-part documentary The Religion Business is expected to premiere online at Easter or soon after.

2025 NRB Convention: Televangelists, religious broadcasters and Christian journalists gathered at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention held in Grapevine, Texas during the last days of February.

NRB would have been the ideal institution to call for massive reform in religious broadcasting but instead it has given a platform for corrupt religious leaders.

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Perry Stone Claims to Receive no Book Royalties, Shares Limited Ministry Financial Information in YouTube Video

 

To address misinformation allegedly spreading on social media, televangelist Perry Stone created a YouTube video claiming he receives no book royalties for books produced and sold through his ministry and disclosed some of his ministries’ expenses.

“There are millions of people who assume that somehow Perry Stone gets a commission, or he gets a payment, or he gets a royalty from those sales. That is absolutely, totally 100% incorrect … if it takes me six months or a year to write a book and I spend hours, hour after hour after hour and we offer it and print it through the ministry, I get absolutely zero, nothing from those sales.”

While Stone may not receive book royalties, as part of a compensation package, he could be paid a flat rate to write books for his ministry.

Stone’s ministry has operated in a financially secretive manner for more than a decade. Because Stone does not reveal his salary, donors are unable to know if the ministry is providing excessive compensation, which is defined by the IRS as exceeding a million dollars annually.

The non-profit organization Voice of Evangelism Outreach Ministries, also known as Perry Stone Ministries, is based in Cleveland, Tennessee, where the Church of God has its headquarters and operates Lee University.

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How Did Televangelist Joni Lamb Acquire $11 Million of Residential Property?

Over time, televangelist Joni Lamb acquired six residential properties worth $11 million, according to research by Trinity Foundation.

Joni Lamb owns four houses in Texas, a home in Georgia and beach condo in Miramar Beach, Florida. This week, Trinity Foundation discovered that Joni still owned the Grapevine, Texas, home she purchased in 1991 along with her husband, Marcus, who died in 2021. Ownership of the property was hidden by the county.

The six properties are worth an estimated $11 million, based off recent sales amounts and estimates on real estate websites.

How Much is Joni Worth?

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Financial Secrets: In 2006, Three Televangelists Created Offshore Companies in the Bahamas

(Photos: Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar, Bill Winston)

In 2006, three American televangelists registered four offshore companies in the Bahamas with Trident Corporate Services. Three of the four corporate filings occurred precisely a week apart. The purposes for the four corporate entities are unknown.

While offshore companies may have a legitimate purpose, they are frequently used for tax evasion and to hide assets when, for instance, a rich husband expects a possible divorce.

Offshore corporate registrations are a critical component of international money laundering.

In December 2024, the IRS launched an investigation into Trident Corporate Services’ parent company Trident Global Trust. The purpose of the IRS investigation is to identify Americans who failed to report income generated in offshore locations during the years 2014 through 2023.

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Religious Court Cases to Watch in 2025

What is Christian journalism lacking? Court reporters! Some of the biggest crimes in the religious world are NOT properly reported because no journalist obtained depositions/court transcripts and then the case gets closed.

Philanthropists can close this void by partnering with media to fund court reporters.

Bloggers, YouTubers, and social media commentators may also fill this gap by researching court documents, attending court hearings, and interviewing attorneys to find out how laws are applied. Religion reporters may enhance their investigative skills by covering court cases.

The following cases, while not an exhaustive list, may be viewed as opportunities to examine allegations of corruption in the church world and to learn about America’s court system.

Continue reading “Religious Court Cases to Watch in 2025”