Tithing on taxable income

[jay santos]

The tithing on gross vs net discussions are common. Can anyone make a case for paying tithing on your "taxable income" figure? If so, I am all ears...

[Indy Coug]

After this site has already justified wearing colored shirts to sacrament and gay marriage, do you think rationalizing taxable income as your tithing basis is all that difficult or risque?

[Mormon Red Death]

Originally Posted by jay santos

The tithing on gross vs net discussions are common. Can anyone make a case for paying tithing on your "taxable income" figure? If so, I am all ears...

Do you mean paying tithing on your net pay?

[ChinoCoug]

You'd get a circular reference if you tried to compute it, because the amount of your tithing payment affects your taxable income.

Taxable Income = Income - Deductions

Deductions = f(Tithing)

Tithing = (Taxable Income)*0.10

Tithing = (Income - f(Tithing))*0.10

[fusnik11]

Originally Posted by jay santos

The tithing on gross vs net discussions are common. Can anyone make a case for paying tithing on your "taxable income" figure? If so, I am all ears...

God starts with one commandment a billion years ago not to judge, now, less than 200 years into 'His' restored church people really care about the sum figure of tithing.

If people didn't ask God stupid ass questions over and over again we'd be a lot happier and real stewards over ourselves and our families.

[jay santos]

Originally Posted by ChinoCoug

You'd get a circular reference if you tried to compute it, because the amount of your tithing payment affects your taxable income.

Taxable Income = Income - Deductions

Deductions = f(Tithing)

Tithing = (Taxable Income)*0.10

Tithing = (Income - f(Tithing))*0.10

If I can get the go ahead, I'm sure I could set up an iteration to come up with an equilibrium on this.

[jay santos]

Originally Posted by fusnik11

God starts with one commandment a billion years ago not to judge, now, less than 200 years into 'His' restored church people really care about the sum figure of tithing.

If people didn't ask God stupid ass questions over and over again we'd be a lot happier and real stewards over ourselves and our families.

Serious question. For all the picking and choosing of doctrine and revelation you do, and for all the scripture you declare mythology and not literal, how did you ever take that one seemingly inconsequential exchange between God and Adam to be the one piece of literal revelation you hold onto?

[jay santos]

Originally Posted by fusnik11

God starts with one commandment a billion years ago not to judge, now, less than 200 years into 'His' restored church people really care about the sum figure of tithing.

If people didn't ask God stupid ass questions over and over again we'd be a lot happier and real stewards over ourselves and our families.

Also, we do live in a world where money happens to be pretty important. How can a financial obligation that could range from 3-10% of your gross income be not important?

[ChinoCoug]

Originally Posted by jay santos

If I can get the go ahead, I'm sure I could set up an iteration to come up with an equilibrium on this.

on second thought, you don't need iterations, just do it algebraically. Assuming tithing is your only deduction and you get to deduct 100% of it,

Tithing = Income*.0909

[minn_stat]

Originally Posted by jay santos

The tithing on gross vs net discussions are common. Can anyone make a case for paying tithing on your "taxable income" figure? If so, I am all ears...

I've never before bothered to get in these discussions with anyone other than my wife and my parents when I was younger, but my family has been out of town for a month now, and it is a Friday night and I'm bored. So I'll bite, although not on the exact question.

From my perspective, I feel one could easily justify removing any 401k contributions from one's "tithable" income. I also feel it is pretty easy to justify remove the non-medicare part of the social security deduction from "tithable" income, as well. 'Course, many of us find it easy to justify paying whatever tithing we decide we want to pay...

More fun for me this year is that I lost $30k on the house we sold earlier this year - if I pay tithing when I make money on investments, shouldn't I be able to subtract losses from my tithing check as well?