Tech Forum

I have two questions:

1. Do we need to mail Tithing Statements for members who have moved from the Ward in 2013?

2. Is there an easy way of getting mailing addresses for non-Ward member donors other than going through one by one on the Donor screen and copying their address to an envelope.

Thanks,

Jeff

jspector wrote:Do we need to mail Tithing Statements for members who have moved from the Ward in 2013?

If you mean the donor statements, or Tithing and Other Offerings Statement, then the answer is no. Tithing Settlement Statements are not given to the donors but rather they are kept by the ward. If you mean the tax valid statements, or Official Tax Statements, then the answer is yes.

jspector wrote:Is there an easy way of getting mailing addresses for non-Ward member donors other than going through one by one on the Donor screen and copying their address to an envelope.

Yes. To print the mailing labels of donors to whom you will be mailing tax valid statements go to Finance | Print Donor Statements. Click File | Print Mailing Labels from the main MLS menu. Select, or check the box, of each donor for whom you want to print a mailing label.

Note that if there is no mailing address for a donor in MLS the donor name will appear on the donor list following the procedure given above but there will be no address listed. You will be at your own devices to get addresses for donors without addresses in MLS. If you cannot find an address using reasonable methods, then you are required to keep the tax valid statement on file for the record retention period. It will then be up to the donor to contact the ward to get the tax valid statement.

Also note that headquarters sends a tax valid statement to the unit of record at the end a January for members who have made donations to more than one unit during the year. Generally only those units in which the member's records were at the time of the donation will be included in the statement from headquarters.

Thanks, Just to clarify. I thought that members who moved from the ward would get complete Tax Statements from their new Ward. I know that we got a bunch of them last year for our members who moved in during the year.

I've been looking, but our ward hasn't received the official tax statements for members who have paid in other wards. When is that supposed to show up? If I need to get these statements to the members by the end of January, shouldn't I have those statements now?

ctbarrett wrote:I've been looking, but our ward hasn't received the official tax statements for members who have paid in other wards. When is that supposed to show up? If I need to get these statements to the members by the end of January, shouldn't I have those statements now?

Unfortunately, I haven't seen them yet either.

Last year, our statements for multi-unit donors didn't come until February 3rd. Perhaps they came in the week before that, but we didn't come in mid-week that week and so didn't see them until the 3rd. I expect they want to make sure all the end-of-year donations are processed and entered before generating the final statements.

Thanks for the hint. It worked perfectly!

ctbarrett wrote:I've been looking, but our ward hasn't received the official tax statements for members who have paid in other wards. When is that supposed to show up? If I need to get these statements to the members by the end of January, shouldn't I have those statements now?

Where do they show up? In the mail?

They will show up in the Finance Statements section of MLS, usually accompanied by a Message explaining what to do with them.

I appreciate the information here, since I have had the same questions. To the last point about combined unit statements, we got ours in MLS Sunday morning, so I was able to print and distribute most of them during church. Worked great, and I'm glad to see the church going this direction.

Regarding the question of mailing the tax-valid statements when you are unable to hand-deliver them. I'm new to the calling, so this is my first time through tithing settlement and tax forms, and I have become very frustrated with the lack of concrete instructions on this topic, specifically what to do when no address is available.

We received a number of donations last year from members of other units, either visitors, or full-time missionaries donating fast offering, etc., and most of these do not have addresses in their donor records. There are also a few members who moved out during the year, but didn't leave a forwarding address or haven't contacted me. I have combed through the last five years of instructional letters in MLS and re-visited the online clerk training, and there is no official documentation anywhere describing what is to be done in that situation.

The only place with the answer is this post (and one or two others from several years back):

jdlessley wrote:
If you cannot find an address using reasonable methods, then you are required to keep the tax valid statement on file for the record retention period. It will then be up to the donor to contact the ward to get the tax valid statement.

While I really appreciate the information, forum posts hardly seem authoritative on such an important subject. Why are there no official instructions more recent than 2006 stating the rule about retaining undelivered tax-valid statements for 1 year? And what constitutes "reasonable methods" for tracking people down? What have others of you done in the case of full-time missionaries donating fast offerings in your units? Do I need to see if the mission office can provide a forwarding address?

Additionally, now that the church is providing the consolidated statements for people who moved during the year, are we still required to mail the ward-only statement to them? It seems unnecessary, but the instructions from the church are unchanged: "Distribute tax-valid statements before Jan. 31." Period.

I understand you certainly can't enumerate and give a solution to every possible circumstance or exception, but is there a reason we can't have a little more detail and clarification through official channels, like what to do when no address is available, and whether the new consolidated statements remove the the need to mail to members who have moved away? My understanding of US tax rules is that it is ultimately the member's responsibility to request and obtain these forms prior to filing their taxes if they need it. So the church has set this Jan 31 distribution deadline policy voluntarily and for any number of good reasons, which I have no problem with, except that they provide no fall-back when meeting the deadline is impossible.

Hopefully this doesn't sound too much like I'm complaining, because I am really just extremely baffled by the lack of information and looking for some documentation that explains all of this.