Sacrifice: what a tenth of everything looks like on a tax return

Romney's returns were the first time most Americans had seen a tithe itemized. The 2010 figure came to about seven percent of income, the 2011 estimate to about twelve, and the campaign explained the mismatch: he pays at year end on estimated income, undershot in 2010, and paid over in 2011 to make it up. The Deseret News editor Paul Edwards said most members would recognize the pattern as "roughly a tenth." Romney himself, on Fox News Sunday, put it as a promise: "I made a commitment to my church a long, long time ago that I would give 10 percent of my income to the church." Twenty-three words, and the whole practice.

The rule dates to a revelation Joseph Smith recorded on July 8, 1838, now section 119 of the Doctrine and Covenants, which asks for "one tenth of all their interest annually." The Church teaches this as ten percent of income and leaves it to each member to decide what income means; gross or net is not specified, and Larry H. Miller, for one, began tithing on gross in late 1978, months before he bought his first Toyota dealership for $3.5 million in May 1979. Members pay through a slip handed to the bishop or, since 2015, online, and each December sit down with the bishop for a tithing declaration in which they state whether they paid a full tithe. The answer matters: question ten of the temple recommend interview is "Are you a full-tithe payer?", and a member who answers no cannot enter a temple. The Church says the money builds and maintains meetinghouses and temples, funds missionary work and education, and the First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve and the Presiding Bishopric decide how it is spent. The practice was not always this firm. In 1899 president Lorenzo Snow toured southern Utah urging members to pay, and the campaign he started cleared the Church's debts by 1906.

The scale is the part nobody outside can verify. In 2012 NBC News estimated tithing income at $7 billion a year and Reuters at up to $8 billion; Wikipedia records estimates that year ranging from $7 billion to $33 billion, which tells you how little anyone knows. An independent analysis, the Widow's Mite Report, put 2024 tithing at $5.5 to $6.5 billion. The First Presidency's statement of December 17, 2019, said that most donations are spent at once and that "a portion is methodically safeguarded through wise financial management and the building of a prudent reserve for the future." The reserve is managed by Ensign Peak Advisors, whose disclosed stock portfolio the SEC put at about $32 billion by 2018; a 2019 whistleblower said the total was closer to $100 billion.

Fasting deserves a word because it is the piece outsiders miss. The practice dates to 1847 and was moved from the first Thursday of the month to the first Sunday so that farmers and laborers could keep it. The money is kept separate from tithing and is spent locally, by the bishop, on people he knows by name. The Church publishes no accounting of it in the United States.

The Church's definition is blunt: to sacrifice is "to give up something valuable or precious, often with intent of accomplishing a greater purpose or goal", and members covenant to observe their promises "by sacrifice." The executives in the profiles tend to describe it as a trade with terms they accepted early. Bill Marriott was bishop of the Chevy Chase Ward from 1975 to 1977 while running Marriott, after a year as a high councilor; his wife Donna said she did not know where he would find the time, and he recalled "very, very long Sundays" that left him wrung out on Monday mornings. Two decades later he said the job "gave me more empathy" for what his employees were carrying. Jon Huntsman Sr., whose container company nearly failed in the 1973 oil embargo, gave more than $1.5 billion away over his life, including $10 million to found the Huntsman Cancer Institute in 1993 and $100 million more in 1995, and served as an unpaid Area Seventy from 1996 to 2011. David Neeleman gave his whole 2002 salary as chief executive of JetBlue, $200,000 plus a $90,000 bonus, to the airline's crew-member crisis fund. Alan Ashton took almost $700 million in Novell stock when WordPerfect was sold in 1994, built Thanksgiving Point with the words "We've been blessed financially and with a large family", then spent 2004 to 2007 as president of the Canada Toronto West Mission and 2013 to 2016 as president of the Provo temple.

"The need to rely on the Lord became very important to me." Bill Marriott, bishop and chief executive

The thing to expect from a Latter-day Saint colleague or counterparty is not piety at the office but a calendar with a second job in it. Romney was bishop of the Belmont, Massachusetts, ward from 1981 to 1986 and president of the Boston Stake from 1986 to 1994, the years he was building Bain Capital, which he co-founded in 1984 and which managed $4 billion by 1999. M. Anthony Burns was chief executive of Ryder System from January 1983 and was serving as a bishop in Miami when Hurricane Andrew hit in 1992; the Red Cross named him its humanitarian of the year. Gary Crittenden served as a bishop and as president of the Yorktown, New York, stake across the years he was chief financial officer of American Express and Citigroup. Clayton Christensen was a bishop and then an Area Seventy from 2002 to 2009 while holding a chair at Harvard Business School. None of these were paid, and each ran to many hours a week on top of the job that was.

The money side is quieter but shows up in the same places. A tenth off the top changes how an executive thinks about a raise, because a tenth of the raise is spoken for. A mission for each child is a known line item, $9,600 per son at the 2003 rate and $7,200 per daughter, and the Church expects it to be planned for rather than borrowed. Whether any of this makes a person better at business is not something a source on this site can prove, and the profiles do not claim it. They show a group of people who decided the terms of the trade in their twenties and did not renegotiate. Marriott's line about relying on the Lord was said by a man who was, at the time, also relying on a very good delegation system.