Tithing

When do you guys do the tithing paperwork? I've been in wards that they do it during the block and others where they wait until afterwards and I just wondered if that was tradition or where it was in the handbook.

I've always done it after the block. If you do it sooner then someone may turn in an additional donation after you've already processed the batch.

I can't find any statements in the Help Center that mandate a particular timing other than the instruction that donations shouldn't be left unattended and insecure. If we do have a donation after we've done the batch the bishop always takes it home and secures it in the same way that he does any donations that are mailed to him. But we prefer not to do that so we generally wait to make sure we've received all the donations for the day.

I think over the years, the brethren have encouraged leaders to attend their meetings instead of doing church business during the block time. I'm not sure where to find that, but I know I've heard it during various talks.

Printing statements of donations for taxes. We are told to print these reports and hand them out. The member is allowed to print their own reports. Can we inform the members that they can print their own statement and if they need help to contact the clerk or do we need to print them and hand the out?

parkinto wrote:Can we inform the members that they can print their own statement and if they need help to contact the clerk . . . .

Yes. The clerk only needs to print and provide a tax statement if the member does not get one on their own.

The statements are not yet available, but should be sometime in the latter part of this month.

parkinto wrote:Can we inform the members that they can print their own statement and if they need help to contact the clerk or do we need to print them and hand the out?

Under Settings on the Donation page on lds.org, there is a checkbox which says "My financial statements do not need to be printed by my Ward". If they member has checked this box then the church won't include them in the pre-generated statements later this month.

You can certainly encourage people to check that box (although they need to do it soon to make sure the aren't included in the pre-generated statements). But you should attempt to distribute the statements included in the pre-generated batch unless you know otherwise that they are printing their own.

parkinto wrote:Can we inform the members that they can print their own statement and if they need help to contact the clerk or do we need to print them and hand the out?

If I understand you correctly, you are proposing that you don't distribute statements and just tell members to print them online if they need them. That is NOT an acceptable option. You need to print them and hand them out.

The Church has a legal obligation to print and deliver the statements. If the member consents online to electronic delivery, that satisfies the requirement, but your proposed solution of telling the member to print their own does not satisfy the requirements in the tax laws.

Keep in mind that in order for the member to be able to print out their statements, the donations will have had to be associated with the membership record. You'd be surprised how often that doesn't happen. (Members arrive in their new ward and make a donation before the membership record arrives. There's nothing to cause anyone to associate the donor record to the membership record later on.)

Short story, there's a number of things that can go wrong and the member will be unable to print a complete statement.