Author: Associated Press
Publication: Houston Chronicle
Date: July 6, 2005
URL: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3254357
The Internal Revenue Service is
looking into the operations and finances of televangelist Benny Hinn's
organization, according to a published report.
The IRS wouldn't discuss the case,
but a representative for Benny Hinn Ministries confirmed to The Dallas
Morning News that the inquiry is under way, characterizing it as routine.
Critics have argued that Hinn improperly
profits from a ministry that hasn't met the IRS definition of a church
for years. The ministry is estimated to raise more than $100 million a
year.
But his public relations contractor
dismissed the possibility that tax exemptions could be at risk. Hinn spokesman
Ronn Torossian said the ministry has "fully cooperated with the IRS" and
is not being audited.
Hinn's ministry, formally renamed
the World Healing Center Church in 2000, has had its administrative and
mail-processing headquarters in Grapevine since a year earlier. Hinn, 52,
and his family live in California.
According to documents provided
to the newspaper by a watchdog group, the inquiry into the ministry began
a year ago and the IRS has asked for dozens of detailed answers. The Trinity
Foundation has investigated Hinn for more than a decade.
Hinn ministry responses to IRS questions
and a purported salary list for ministry officials are among documents
that Trinity members said they salvaged from trash bins outside Hinn-related
offices.
The salary document lists Hinn as
CEO and his annual earnings as $1.325 million. Attorneys for the ministry,
in a letter to The News, said the document was either a fake or had been
stolen.
The newspaper found that another
watchdog group's complaint to the IRS - that the ministry lacks financial
oversight and independent governance - may have led the agency to question
the operation through what's called a church tax-inquiry letter.
Wall Watchers, a North Carolina-based
advocacy group for religious donors, recently issued an alert about the
Hinn ministry through its Ministry Watch Web site.
Wall Watchers sent a letter to the
IRS early last year calling for an investigation of the Hinn Ministry,
said Rod Pitzer, Wall Watchers' research director.
Hinn and his attorneys, who declined
to be interviewed, have maintained the ministry uses proper accounting.
