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ICOCinvestigation.com has heard multiple accounts of members being told that it was “illegal” for them to be given salary information for church leaders.  Such a claim, however, is completely inaccurate.  We are calling for individuals who were told such to document these events in a sworn statement.  We believe that this happened on enough occasions to make it obvious that it was an established method of keeping curious members out of the books.  Anyone who experienced this, or who knows anyone who did, should contact us.  


Miscellaneous Salary Information

Salary Calculator (2001)

Apology Letters (2003)

Los Angeles International Church of Christ Salary Documents (2005)

 

 

 


Miscellaneous Salary Information

ICOCinvestigation.com has received information from numerous former members and former church administrators as to how minister's salaries where handled.  Did you know that when a minister needed a new computer the cost of the computer was factored into his salary?  Did you know that there was a procedure in place that allowed ministers to receive refunds back from the IRS so they could off-set their special missions contributions?

From: as myself (barrymahfood)

 9/29/2007 2:04 pm 

To:ALL  
 

HI all, just a couple of days ago I was reminded of one of the ways that the ICC "needs-based" salary model benefited those of us on staff in an unusual way. At my new job (Financial Aid adviser at Full Sail in Orlando) I was calculating a student's net financial aid. I then had to add in the lender fees to get the gross amount. That reminded me of the term we used to use in the admin office of the church: "grossing up."

Whenever we dealt with a minister's salary, we would treat the calculated salary as net, then add in the applicable taxes to arrive at the total salary. The practice was to add in enough so that the minister would get back approximately 3% of their salary in IRS refunds. The justification for this was that we needed to help them come up with their special contribution each year. Obviously, most real jobs give you a salary that represents gross. Once the IRS gets its share, you live off the remainder. Not in the ICC.

Incidentally, this practice of grossing up also applied to any other benefits that were counted as salary. For example, if the church bought a new computer for the lead evangelist, its cost was included as salary, and it was grossed up so the minister wouldn't have to bear any tax consequences resulting from the gift. Cool, huh?

 

Did you know that DPI authors while not holding their own copyrights for books written for the church could count the proceeds from the sale of their books towards their own personal special mission contribution

From: as myself (barrymahfood)

 9/30/2007 6:37 pm 

To:WildJen  
 

>>Could I link directly to this post on the ICOCinvestigation website?<<

Absolutely.

>>Have you ever heard of ministers at any level getting the bonus of not having to pay their own SMC if their congregation/sector made their SMC goals?<<

No, but it wouldn't surprise me. I did hear that those who wrote books, while they could not own the copyrights or get paid directly from their sale, could count the proceeds that went to the church as their special contribution.

 

Salary Calculator

ICOCinvestigation.com received an excel spreadsheet salary calculator used by some church administrators in 2001 to calculate salaries for local staff.   Does anybody know what #11 (Special Adjustment) was used for?

 

Apology Letters

During the flurry of apology letters from churches after Henry Kriete released his Honest to God paper, there were many admissions as to salary given by the local churches.  Admissions of needing a salary structure commended by the church, lavish spending, not being open with the congregation, mismanagement, salary model reviews, overspending, no accountability in how SMC was spent, and worldliness in their finances.

 

Los Angeles International Church of Christ Salary Documents

LAICC  Ministry Employment Positions This document that gives descriptions of the LAICC Ministry positions in Jan 2005 (with a code for different categories) and gives a salary range for each one.  Here are some specific things to take into account from this sheet:
  • The salary figures are based on someone being full-time and having no geographic cost of living adjustment
     
  • These salary figures INCLUDED parsonage (for example, if this sheet says salary is 75,000, then $30,000 might be designated as "parsonage" which would leave $45,000 as "salary")  In other words, they did not receive a parsonage on top of the amount on this sheet.
     
  • These figures DID NOT INCLUDE any benefits (health, dental, retirement, etc.)
     
  • These figures DID NOT INCLUDE any personal business reimbursements.
 
LAICC Hay Model Salary Calculator
This excel document  was originally used at the end of 2003 to calculate salaries based on the new Hay Model.  It has been updated with the 2005 Salary figures from the document above.  (Except the admin salaries are still the 2003 figures because we haven't received an update on their figures in 2005).  One of the worksheets lists the minimum and maximum salary amounts based on the definitions from the document above.   The second worksheet is a sample region put together just to show what items were factored in to determine where someone's salary actually fell in the range.  Here are things to take into account on this sheet:
  • Once a woman staff person had a child, they were determined to be "part time" and their salary would be adjusted down to 65% of what the salary range dictated.  This 65% pay factor is used in the sample region.
     
  • There was also a geographic cost of living adjustment that would be made based on which part of the LA Church you lived.  The .pdf assumes no geographic cost of living adjustment, (so the multiplier would be 1.0).  Our source states that when he lived there, no region of the LA Church would have been 1.0.  To his knowledge, the lowest region was 1.10.  He also speculates that some of the more expensive areas (such as O.C) would have had a multiplier in the range of 1.2 or 1.3, but that is just a guess.  For the sample sheet, a multiplier of 1.10 to show the lowest possible in LA.
     
  • As indicated in the .pdf, there is a RANGE of salary for each position.  This is based on longevity.  P(25) is the industry standard for each position.  The actual salary could fall anywhere in the range allowed.  This means a person would START at the bottom of the range (usually 85% or 90% of the P(25) industry standard) then MAX OUT at the top of the range (always 110%) of the range.  How fast they went through that range depends on the position.  The .pdf file indicated the amount of pay increase per year for each position.  In the sample sheet, we have tried to show how it works.  The formulas are pretty complicated.

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