I also tithe on any tax returns I receive.

I for one subscribe to the paycheck principle. We write a check monthly based on the 10% of my gross salary. It works for us and we feel comfortable with that mechanism.

With regards to Net Worth and Net Increase, how would that take into account vacations or other expenditures? Wouldn’t those expenses therefore decrease my net worth and thereby reduce my tithe?

I suppose everyone is able to approach tithing in the way that they feel is an honest representation of their increase.

Salary or wage really is not your annual or monthly interest! In order to receive that salary or wage there are certain expenses and there are expenses that need to be accounted for to run a family before a profit or interest is able to be calculated.

If you read the scriptures he listed and think and pray about it, this makes more sense than the gross salary tithing that many practice. If you were an ancient farmer, herdsman, or rancher, would you gather all your resources (home building materials, firewood, clothing, food, etc.) and tithe before you feed or warmed your family…no, you would tithe on the surplus goods you were to profit from and not use for your own basic needs.

This principle promotes the principle of righteous stewardship…you don’t buy all the things you want and don’t need…you take care of your needs and create a surplus. A surplus is wealth, ownership and interest. Salary or wage is none of those things…only part of the resources you spend your day gathering (i.e. home building materials, firewood, clothing, food, etc.). If we squander those resources and don’t create a surplus (we have probably all faced this), we are not being wise stewards and will rob God.

—————————

The church doesn’t ever get very specific on how to calculate tithing.

For many members the biggest question is whether to pay on gross or net, as in whether you should pay your tithing before or after

taxes. But that’s actually a relatively minor question, which already assumes some big things and ignores other big things. The

biggest assumption made is that tithing is to paid on income money earned from a job or sales. Let’s go ahead and assume that for

now, but there is a vastly different definition of tithing that will be mentioned later.

The question of gross vs net also ignores anything that isn’t based in monetary units, cash, currency, dollars (for the US and

others), etc. How are we to consider bartered goods, such as babysitting trading? If you babysit for your friend and next they

babysit for you, you each received something that was worth $50, but instead you just traded babysitting and avoided the actual cash

changing hands.

That example could logically lead you to try to figure out how to pay tithing every time someone helps you in any way without monetary

pay (such as the Elder’s Quorum helping your family move!). Consider another example, though: your employee benefit package includes

“free” health insurance, and really it’s just a bartered payment to you. Your company doesn’t pay you the money, but the value of the

benefit is still something you earn from the company. Someone looking for a job would take one that pays $50,000 and has benefits

that value approximately $20,000 rather than taking a job that pays $60,000 with no benefits. They really should pay tithing on the

full $70,000 ($50,000 plus $20,000 benefits), instead of just the $50,000 alone, right? If you only pay tithing on $50,000, and your

neighbor pays tithing on $60,000 but has no benefits (so he has to buy his own insurance, pay for his kids braces out of pocket, etc),

clearly you are living a nicer lifestyle with more “increase” but you’re paying LESS tithing! Something’s not right.

What about other bartered goods or benefits, such as all the food from your garden? If you grow so much food that you save $250/month

in grocery bills, it’s like you’re earning and extra $3000 that year. Just because there are no physical cash dollars involved

doesn’t mean it’s not part of your “increase”. You’re getting food that would otherwise cost $250/month. You literally got and extra

$3000 in “income” that year in the form of vegetables instead of cash. Taken further, theoretically you could move your family out to

the woods and live entirely off the land, no manufactured goods whatsoever, no money changing hands ever. How could you then obey the

Law of Tithing?

There have also been conflicting messages about whether to tithe on gifts. If you are given $500 for Christmas, do you tithe on that.

What about if you are given a painting? What if you are somewhat poor and some rich uncle dies and leaves you a $100,000 Rembrandt

painting? The only way you could afford the $10,000 tithing is to sell the painting first! But surely we should not have to sell

gifts to pay the tithing.

An idea to deal with the “gift tithe” problem is to pay tithing on gifts only if it replaces expenses we already would have made -

such as someone giving us a year supply of toilet paper which we would have had to buy anyway. In the case of highly valuable gifts,

we would only pay tithing if we do in fact sell them for other reasons and not just to pay the tithing. This could also include the

service “gifts” mentioned above, such as the Elder’s Quorum helping you move. If you truly couldn’t afford to hire movers and

desperately needed the help, then you might not be able to afford and can’t be expected to pay tithing on the value of (semi)

professional movers. But if you were going to hire movers anyway, and instead let the Elder’s Quorum do it, you could pay tithing on

the value of the service they gave you. The same goes for the garden, you pay tithing on the value of the food only if you would have

just bought the food otherwise.

But that’s just NUTS! Who is going to bother figuring all that out every time anything happens in their life? Do you pay extra

tithing if you friend listens to your troubles and you might have visited a psychiatrist instead but now you feel much better so you

forego the office visit? What if you receive a painting that you know probably cost around $1000, and you were indeed thinking of

buying a painting for the front room, but you were only planning to spend around $500 – do you pay tithing on $500 saved, and then

keep a record that whenever you sell the gift painting you need to still pay tithing on any proceeds in excess of $500?

Such thoughts and rules and records would reduce tithing to a “hedge around the law” set of rules, exceptions, and other

considerations that starts to lose the original intention of the law. But if you ignore these things, and just pay tithing on

money/cash income, it doesn’t change the economic fact that the bartered goods/services are still being received and not being tithed

on. If you truly want to be honest with your tithing you HAVE to consider the value of these non-monetary goods, gifts, and services;

sticking your head in the sand won’t make the problem go away. Economics has often been called “the dismal science” because of just

such situations as this.

The problem might seem inescapable at first glance. One the one hand we can ignore all the difficult details of trying to account for

bartered goods or gift services or any other non-montary “increase” and just pay tithing on the paycheck from the office. If we do

this we are NOT paying a full tithing, plain and simple, but it’s simple and easy and can be done regularly easily enough, and we can

just toss in a little extra tithing money to hopefully cover all those things. On the other hand we can subscribe to a “tithing

hedge” set of rules and considerations on how to calculate the monetary value of all those extra goods and services and in what

circumstance or when or on what portion of the value to pay tithing on them. If we do this we will be paying an accurate and true

full tithe, but we are in for a nightmare of always reducing everything to monetary value all throughout the year in order to pay a

regular tithe. Neither option seems acceptable. But the plot thickens (significantly).

Let’s move back a step and rethink just what is tithing in the first place. Another interpretation of the Law of Tithing and the

“increase” the Lord speaks of is to pay tithing only on our net worth increase each year. Basically, you make a financial statement

at each year’s end that includes an accounting of all your assets and liabilities (a true financial statement also has a section for

income/expenses). At the end of the year you compare it to last year’s statment and pay tithing on the increase, it’s that simple.

The net worth approach solves a number of problems, but has a few remaining (and one big new one). The main problem of considereing

bartered goods is pretty much wiped out, because while you many have to calculate the value of your material possesions for the asset

column, you only have to do this once in the year. Also, it’s a lot easier to make the estimations than many think – professional

appraisals are largely unneccessary except for one large ticket items (homes, businesses, rental properties, yachts, etc), others can

be easily “self” appraised (check the “blue book” for your car, take a guess as to your watch, etc) and much of the rest can simply be

grouped together as “personal belongings”. In each case the prevailing concept is to calculate (or quickly guess) how much money you

could actually get for the item if you sold it on the market today. That means the $2000 your family spent on clothing is really only

worth about $50!

(By the way, if you think making an annual financial statement is too much work or focuses too much on worldly possessions, there is a

section below you’ll need to read and think about, but suffice it to say that doing it is merely an act of being a responsible and

wise steward. One of the largest reasons most Mormons outright dismiss this approach to tithing is financial laziness)

The net worth approach also puts tithing on a far more equal footing among all the saints. We’ve often heard the idea that tithing is

imminently fair, that when we all have to pay the same 10% whether rich or poor, then it’s very fair and even across the board. But

paying paycheck tithing, before living expenses, ends up being far more difficult on the poor than the rich. Net worth tithing ends

up being much more evenly felt across the board, as fair and equal tithing ought to be. It is then up to those who can to freely give

more if they feel so inclined, or put their money to other good philanthropic uses.

Interpreting tithing as 10% of net worth increase has it’s troubles though. First of all, one of the small problems is that you still

have the issue of receiving a gift so valuable that you could not reasonably afford to pay tithing on the increased net worth that

gift caused. This problem has to be deal with still, but at least you only figure it out once a year instead of 12, 24, or more

times!

The biggest new problem, however, is that this approach significantly changes the idea of what tithing is in the first place. If you

pay tithing on your paycheck, that’s one version of “increase”, whereas paying on the increase in your wealth at the end of the year

after all your living expenses and other spending have occured, that’s an entirely different thing (and a lot less tithing).

First off, a slight problem with this is that it might seem to encourage more consumption, the same way that tax deductions might

encourage more consumption of those goods and services that are deductible. But that would only be true if you are actively looking

for ways to get out of paying tithing, whereas if you’re just being a responsible steward of your income and spending habits you

wouldn’t approach it that way. So long as you feel comfortable with your lifestyle and are not living in sinful rampant excess, you’d

be fine there. This would simply require wisdom and sound money management, something you should be doing anyway, such as not

charging on the credit card for that new plasma screen TV when you really can’t afford it.

But the main problem still remains, whether the Lord’s commandment to pay tithing to the Church can be rightly interpreted as 10% of

the increase in your wealth at the end of the year, or whether recent statements mentioning “income” mean that tithing ought to be

calculated according your ongoing weekly or bi-weekly or monthly paycheck money. Nearly 100% of tithing stories and examples given

from the pulpet lately illustrate tithing according to the “paycheck” interpretation. But is that really necessary, or are church

members everywhere actually paying far more than God’s Law of Tithing really requires of them?

Some statements by Joseph Smith and other early church leaders, and the scriptures themselves, seem to lean more towards the annual

increase in wealth interpretation.

- Genesis 14:39 (Joseph Smith Translation)
“Wherefore Abram paid unto him tithes of all that he had, of all the riches which he possessed, which God had given him MORE THAN HE

HAD NEED.” (Emphasis added.)

- D&C 119:3,4
“And this shall be the beginning of the tithing of my people.
“And after that, those who have been thus tithed shall pay one-tenth of all their interest annually; and this shall be a standing law

unto them forever, for my holy priesthood, saith the Lord.”

- James E. Talmage (as he imagined the Lord speaking)
“You have need of many things in this world-food, clothing, and shelter for your family and yourself, the common comforts of life, and

the things that shall be conducive to refinement, to development, to righteous enjoyment. You desire material possessions to use for

the assitance of others and thereby gain greater bleassing for yourself and yours.
“Now, you shall have the means of acquiring these things; but remember they are mine, and I require of you the payment of a rental

upon that which I give into your hands. However, your life will not be one of uniform increase in substance and possessions; you will

have your losses, as well as your gains; you will have your periods of trouble as well as your times of peace. Some years will be

years of plenty unto you, and others will be years of scarcity.
“And, now, instead of doing as mortal landlords do-require you to contract with them to pay in advance, whatever your fortunes or your

prospects may be-you shall pay me not in advance, but when you have received; and you shall pay me in accordance with what you

receive. If it so be that in one year your income is abundant, then you can afford to pay me a little more; and if it be so that the

next year is one of distress and your income is not what it was, then you shall pay me less; and should it be that you are reduced to

the utmost penury so that yo have nothing coming in, you will pay me nothing.
“Have you ever found a landlord of earth who was willing to make that kind of a contract with you? When I consider the liberality of

it all, and the consideration that my Lord has had for me, I feel in my heart that I could scarcely raise my countenance to his heaven

above if I tried to defraud him out of that just rental.”

- Joseph Fielding Smith, Church History and Modern Revelation, 4 vols., 3: 120 (1946)
“In more recent times the Church has not called upon the members to give all their surplus property to the Church, but it has been the

requirement according to the covenant, that they pay the tenth.”

More modern statements almost universally lean towards the paycheck interpretation. Commonly heard are bleeding heart stories of poor

widows who paid their tithing instead of buying bread for the starving kids and then are miraculously helped by a gift of food from an

“in-tune” neighbor or someone else. These clearly indicate that we should pay tithing regularly on our income, and when that is

extremely difficult to do, then we will be all the more blessed by doing it. Apostles and prophets have even told of experiences like

this from the pulpet in General Conference. The most official recent statements regarding tithing also seem to lean toward this

“paycheck tithing” interpretation simply by saying we pay tithing on “income”, which most people say means “paycheck”.

- Letter from First Presidency – March 19, 1970
“What is a proper tithe?”
“For your guidance in this matter, please be advised that we have uniformly replied that the simplest statement we know of is that

statement of the Lord himself that the members of the Church should pay one-tenth of all their interest annually, which is understood

to mean income. No one is justified in making any other statement than this. We feel that every member of the Church should be

entitled to make his own decision as to what he thinks he owes the Lord, and to make payment accordingly.”

- The General Handbook of Instructions (for church leaders)
Definition of Tithing
The First Presidency has written: “The simplest statement we know of is the statement of the Lord himself, namely, that the members of

the Church should pay ‘one-tenth of all their interest annually, which is understood to mean income. No one is justified in making any

other statement than this.’” (First Presidency letter, 19 Mar. 1970; see also D&C 119:4).

With the modern emphasis on paycheck tithing, is there still room for the increase in wealth interpretation? The exact word “income”

(itself based on the term “increase”) is still open to some interpretation, and could refer to annual wealth (net worth) increase.

But if so, that would mean that many general authorities, including apostles, are truly mistaken in what they say about tithing,

because their talks and writings clearly talk about paycheck tithing. Could they be so mistaken on such an important doctrine? It

seems incredulous, but it could be so.

First of all, church leaders, including prophets and apostles, have not always agreed with one another on doctrinal issues. Early

church apostles often debated and argued with each other and prophets like Brigham Young on large issues! In recent years the

brethren have been far more civil about disagreements, but such still exist. A modern apostle once mentioned how the Quorum of the

Twelve and the First Presidency are more unified than ever. That’s good news, but it means they were less unified in years past, and

it also means they are not yet perfectly 100% unified. It is possible that some apostles believe and personally follow the wealth

increase interpretation of tithing, and they might hear a fellow apostle preach about paycheck tithing in General Conference and

silently say to themselves, “It’s okay, the Lord has left it open to interpretation, so I won’t worry about that”.

Secondly, tithing is also often seen by church leaders as a way of showing the Lord that we aren’t just interested in making money and

getting wealthy and rich. While that’s true, it belies the true nature of wealth and riches.

Most church leaders were never rich and wealthy men, and usually worked for a paycheck or owned a small business or the like, the

“normal” type of thing. As such they might have many economic/money/wealth ideas strongly engrained which fit that middle class

reality, such as a weekly paycheck, but are actually mistaken in the larger reality of how money and wealth in the real world works.

This is a whole other major issue with Mormons, Christians, and the poor and middle class of the whole world in general. Most people

think that money is somehow “evil”. If you ask a Mormon about that they might respond with “no, it’s just the ‘love of money’ that is

evil”, which is still mistaken, and doesn’t even make proper sense when one truly understands what money is, what it represents, and

how it is acquired. The depth of the issue is far too great to fairly delve here and now, but a few points might still be of service.

In the days of Joseph Smith people were far more enterprising than on average today. The concepts of an annual accounting of assets

and wealth and increase were normal language to them, while the middle class today usually have never done a financial statement once,

much less annually. That’s telling. Our modern world, though richer than in all human history, espouses a certain financial

ignorance and/or laziness in the majority of the population unheard of in times past. This creates a permeating (and clouded) mindset

that is hard to break, and it could easily and understandably find it’s way into the writings and talks of general authorities.

All throughout the scriptures, especially the Book of Mormon, God blesses rightous people with wealth and riches. Not as a rule, not

always, but very often. Then we read other passages which say “you connot serve God and mammon”, which confuse us. The answer is not

simple, but part of it is that wealth and riches have never just literally poured down from heaven like mana (except for the mana!) -

they always come from industrious enterprise, technological genius and advance, and economic freedom and responsibility. It can be

seen how those ingredients can come from God as blessings, such as inspired inventiveness, or the desire to serve others leading one

to build a successful company whose product or service does good.

The persuit of great good with zeal, hard work, creative genius, and consistant discipline, can also yeild great wealth. In this

world we are paid in proportion to our contribution. If you shine shoes one at at time for $10 each, in 10 years you might make

$250,000. If you build company that produces automatic shoe shining widgets that end up shining 10 million men’s shoes, you might end

up owning a company worth $25 million. But not many people do that, they just can’t envision it, or they don’t know how to start, or

any of many other reasons. The main problem is that the world they know only involves doing something for a paycheck, not creating

value or building a system or growing their influence beyond normal capacity (although all of those things are true and eternal

principles). This explains why many worthy and good people who seemingly “ought” to be blessed by God with riches aren’t. The fact

is, God never just hands over riches, people have to create them. God will help in ways mentioned above, but he doesn’t just dole

them out.

The point of this diversion is that those who really understand the source of great wealth are few in this world, and the rest of us

labor from a poor or middle class point of view, which changes the meaning of EVERYTHING we see and hear and read and think, including

tithing.

If we wish to subscribe to a view of the Law of Tithing that prescribes paying 10% only on the increase of our net worth, our wealth,

as signified in a full and proper financial accounting taken at the end of the year (which a good steward would rightfully do, but the

poor and middle class often think is “too much bother”), then we have to overcome the fact that almost everything we hear about

tithing in the church today clearly views tithing as paying 10% on your paycheck income. To overcome that, we have to account for how

those general authorities, including prophets and apostles, could be so mistaken. The whole issue of how different people view money

and wealth creation as briefly discussed above, can make this account.

The real question is this: Has God truly spoken in recent times, saying that tithing is to be paid on paycheck income? If he hasn’t,

then we only have the scriptures to go on, and we must grapple with them to interpret the issue. Since the official church stance is

that we are to feel it out and decide for ourselves what amount of tithing we should pay, it is very clear that God has NOT made any

such “paycheck” statement. The fact that so many church leaders talk about paycheck tithing does NOT mean that’s the definite true

way to interpret it, because if it did mean that then the church would be more clear with a new official statement or a new rewriting

of the General Handbook or something.

When any leader is pressed on the issue, right up to the prophet, they always ultimately refer back to the revelation to Joseph Smith

which says “one-tenth of all their interest annually”. After that it is entirely left up to all of us individually what that means.

Just because 90% of the church, general authority or no, translates that to “paycheck tithing” doesn’t mean the other 10% might not be

right to think it’s really only supposed to be “net worth tithing”.

The claim is not here being made that net worth tithing is definitely the correct interpretation, but simply that it is more likely to

be. It solves major issues that come with paycheck tithing, and it’s problems can more easily be overcome. But the final ultimate

conclusion is the same as the church’s, that each person must sincerely decide for themselves how much tithing is the right amount.

I know Elder McConkie expressed the opinion that LDS should tithe on just about any conceivable increase. As usual, he was and is out of step with the Brethren, who have steadfastly refused to endorse any such statement.

I recently left a job where I paid 100% of my medical insurance premiums. Since it was part of my gross pay, I paid 10% on the money I paid for my medical insurance.

I recently changed jobs and my current employer pays 95% of my premiums. Should I now tithe the value of my premiums? Most of my other employers have also paid the premiums and I never thought about whether I should tithe on that amount before. What about paying tithing on the value of all of my fringe benefits? For example, my employer matches my 401(K) at 100% and it vests immediately. Should I be paying tithing on that as well? What about the amount my employer pays for my life insurance? What about my company cell phone, which I can make personal phone calls on, and my company lap top, which I can use for personal reasons as well?