[throwwwaway69]

> Any church run as a business should not be considered a church at all.

Virtually every nonprofit is run nearly the same way as a regular business. They still make profits, the only differences are restrictions around distributing income to owners and some mild accountability in how funds are spent.

[nroets]

There's often a crucial difference in the nature of "revenue": With nonprofits it's often a voluntary contribution ("donation"). Or non profits can rightly claim that the contribution is of a capital nature in which case it's equivalent to an equity raise for a business (share issue even though the shares will never pay dividends).

Donations and equity raises are not taxable income.

[throwwwaway69]

Many large non-profits actually make most of their money as returns from investments. The Mormon church is not at all unusual in this way - most large universities also make most of their money from investments. As an example, when I reviewed the Universty of Texas finances in 2019 I think it was, they could have charged zero tuition for every student across every campus and still would have had a positive net income for the year. Massive endowments are useful for this exact purpose - allowing operations even without any outside contributions.

[s1artibartfast]

You're probably thinking of one type of nonprofit but there are several. The church in this case is operate for any more like a non-profit Hospital or business. You can run Starbucks or Apple as a non-profit. As long as you don't return profit to the individual owners and keep it in the business, you can qualify