Senator Looking at Lavish Lifestyles of Televangelists

The thing that the media will cover, of course, is the expensive cars, private jets, and so on that many of these "prosperity preachers" have.

There is actually a very real issue here. Churches, unlike every other 501(c)3 tax exempt organization, is not required to file a publicly accessible 990 form.

I incorporated a 501(c)3 tax exempt organization and chase the paperwork through the IRS in 1990 as a non-lawyer, Arisia.

When I was involved in running it, gross revenues were less than $50,000/year, and now it's probably less than $200K/year.

For any church, considering building, maintenance, salaries and benefits for, preacher, secretary, education director, and janitor, you are well above $500K on anything but the tiniest church.

It's too expensive for them, but it's not too expensive for us.

They object to form 990s because they do not want their parishioners to know that they are wasting their money on their own inflated lifestyles.

Check out the Trinity Foundation a Christian reform organization that has been talking about this for years.