Lee Wright

All right, good morning, everybody. Let’s begin with a word of prayer. And I hope that we have a great morning. And you feel free to ask questions using the Q&A. And we’ll get started. Let’s have a prayer and then we’ll begin.

Father, thank you so much for today. Thank you that we can come together. Thank you that we can have a means like this to share important information. Help us to be very wise, and very wise stewards of all that you’ve entrusted with us as a church. And Father, I pray for great wisdom that we might do and follow these kinds of tax procedures that are most beneficial and the best that we can do. In Jesus name, amen.

All right, I am going to share my screen was with you. Okay. We’re going to begin as we talk about small churches and taxes. We’re going to begin by looking at proper ways to do compensation for the church. So, we’re going to utilize a form from GuideStone called Compensation Planning Guide. After this is all over, you can find it at guidestone.org/compensationplanning. You can find this and you can find many other tools right there as well. We have the second presentation that I’m going to be doing, and it is on alsbom.org/ccs, stands for Church Compensation Services. And so, you’ll find that there, and it does list the various resources including GuideStone. But for now, you can just follow along, and then later on, you can get these two resources and have them available to you anytime. So, let’s begin. And we will be looking at compensation planning, a proper way to do this. Why is this important? Why is it so important? And it is important that first of all, we honor God’s Words. And the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain. “The labor is worthy of his wages. “Even so the Lord is commanded “that those who preach the gospel “should live from the gospel.” So this is very important, and very important that we do it to the best of our ability. So, there’s benefits of a compensation plan. Number one, it reduces confusion, it ensures funds are spent appropriately, it lets ministers know that you value them. And actually, there are some dangers of the way that we normally do it. The way that we usually do it as a church, is that we have what we say is a lump sum or package. And we’ll see to a pastor, here’s X number of dollars, divide it up any way you want to. But there’s problems with that. It really does not work. Churches have done this for decades, but it just does not work. It often causes the ministers to pay higher taxes, it may lead to a financial hardship for the church, and it distorts the minister’s amount of actual income. So, we want to do better than these things. And about the financial hardship, the question is, and you and I would think, “Well, why do we care? “Let him divide it up any way he wants to.” And, whatever he does, that’s up to him. But the real problem with that is, what if we have a minister who comes and he says, “Well, I need all the money I can get. “So, I’m not going to get any life insurance, “I’m not going to getting disability insurance, “I’m not going to prepare for my retirement.” And then what if that minister becomes disabled? What if that minister dies while he’s serving your church? What would you do? And I think we would find, and practice has shown this to be true, that churches in that instance, they will help the minister’s family until they can figure out how they’re gonna live and get on their feet. That might be six months, it might be a year, it might be longer. And that would be a tremendous financial hardship on the church, when they’re also trying to call a new pastor. So, the insurance is very cheap compared to the possibility. And that’s what we mean by, it may lead to financial hardship for the church. So there’s dangers of this lump sum or package approach. So, number three is the eligibility requirements of a minister for tax purposes. Most of what we’re gonna talk about this morning is about the minister. We will talk about some things that will apply to non-ministers paid by your church as well. But we need to know the eligibility requirements. So first of all, that person is ordained, licensed or commissioned, they administer the ordinances, they conduct worship, they have management responsibilities to the church, and considered to be a religious leader by your church. Now, for a pastor, this is automatic, because, as long as he’s ordained and performs these functions, it’s real simple. It becomes a little bit more difficult, say for example, a youth minister. Is the youth minister ordained and performing worship? Probably so, and then he would qualify as a minister for tax purposes. What if he’s licensed? Well, what about that possibility? He might be leading worship, he might not be doing the ordinances, and so, those are the possibilities, and he might or might not qualify as a minister for tax purposes. So, in a church, we’re talking about being ordained or licensed. Being ordained or licensed. Commission refers to a missionary. Okay, I think we have a couple of… Those are just chat, no questions so far. Okay. So, if you would like to ask a question, just use your Q&A button at the bottom. Alright, now, on page two of this guide, and you’ll see it later on down the road when you download it, it says, these ministers have a dual tax status. They’re an employee for income tax purposes, they’re self employed for social security purposes. Ministers are treated very differently. In fact, I don’t know of anybody that’s traded in such an unusual manner. A minister serving at church is an employee for income tax, but self employed for Social Security. And this causes a lot of confusion. And this is what we’re going to be talking about today; a minister who serves a church or serves in association. You’ll find that there are a few other kinds of ministers. For example, an evangelist is truly self employed. But for a minister serving church, they have this strange dual tax status. So, what difference does it make? And waiting to know that a minister for tax purposes is exempt from mandatory federal withholding, that doesn’t mean they don’t pay the tax, it just means they don’t have to do federal withholding. They may do their own income tax withholding if they wish, or, they might do quarterly income tax payments. And they might do that on their own. They are eligible for a church-designated housing allowance. Notice that that says church-designated. The Church must approve the housing allowance amount. But, they must pay their own self employment tax, SECA tax. And that rate is 15.3%. Now, for a regular employee, 7.65% is withheld out of their paycheck, and the church matches with an additional 7.65%. But for a minister, you cannot do that. And they pay their own, a total of 15.3%. So, we want to design a compensation plan, and it’s in six steps. The first step is to determine the needs. And you’ll find in the guide, you’ll find a worksheet that has to do with ministry-related expenses, employer-provided benefits and personal income. That’s just a worksheet, and we’ll move on from there. Step two is to establish written policies. The policies should cover four areas; ministry-related expenses. How do you do that? What kind of form do you use? And what kind of procedures do you do? What are the employee benefits that your church provides? You really should write this down and make it a part of your policies, so that it is a known factor. And that way, it makes it a lot easier when you’re calling a pastor, that you know the benefits and so you know that you’re gonna provide ministry-related expenses, and you’re going to provide these benefits. So therefore, as we negotiate, let’s talk salary. And that makes it a lot easier. Then you’ll need to have some policies about personal income and how you do the housing allowance. And then finally, you can have personnel policies, which can be anything that you wish. Could be about vacation, it can be about sick leave, it can be about sabbatical, it could be about other kinds of personnel policies. So, establish those as written policies. I find that sometimes a pastor who’s pretty wise in these things comes in and establishes that we will have proper kinds of compensation, including those factors. And then, say 10 years later, that pastors moved on to another church, there’s a brand new committee, and they don’t know what the former committee did. And so therefore, they move right back to the lump sum or package approach, saying to that new pastor, “Here’s X number of dollars, “you divide it up any way you want to.” So, we should have written policies, and they don’t have to be long, but it should be a part of our policy manual. Actually, you could probably do this in three or four pages. I saw one that was from a church that was 16 pages long. And I thought, oh my goodness. But this can be three, four or five pages would be adequate. So, step three is to provide for ministry-related expenses. And these expenses can be done with an accountable reimbursement plan. You’ve got to have an accountable reimbursement plan, or you don’t do anybody any good. So, this money can be used for vehicle use for business purposes, such as visiting prospects, such as visiting the hospitals, such as going to a meeting or a conference, that’s business-related, things like that. It can be for meetings and workshops, it can be for books and periodicals, for say, sermon preparation, for example. It can be for continuing education opportunities. And those are wonderful to pay for for your staff to keep them actively fresh in their ministry. And then finally, provisions for ministry-related hospitality. This means that the pastor, for example, could take a perspective family to lunch, he could pay for it, he could tell them all about the church, he could tell them about our beliefs, he could talk to them about where they stand spiritually, and do they have a relationship with Christ? Those would all be a business purpose, and that lunch could be reimbursed. Now, the requirements of this is that, the expenses must have a business purpose, and you must document the amount, date, place and purpose. Amount, date, place and purpose. The expenses must be substantiated within 60 days. So, most ministers will turn that in once a month, but it should not go beyond 60 days. And then, you may give an advance, say, to go to the convention or something, something expensive. You can give an advance, but any excess must be returned along with receipts within 120 days. Now, you might use the IRS-approved standard mileage rate for those transportation expenses. And that IRS mileage rate this year is 57 and a half cents for 2020. Any kind of unused money cannot be given as a bonus or additional income. In fact, in the booklet it says, “Do not do that, and do not do it from salary deduction.” If you do this from reducing the salary, it’s just regular taxable income. So, an accountable reimbursement plan is from budget money. It is a budget separate and apart from income. And we recommend that you even put it in a different part of the budget, so that everyone knows that’s not compensation, is simply a reimbursement for business expenses. In the booklet, it gives a sample. And so, this sample shows the date, place, purpose and number of miles, or it shows that something was purchased and the receipt. So, have those done at least every 60 days. Now, I did want to share this diagram. This diagram is one that actually comes out of an IRS Publication, and it is about some of our transportation. So, if we go from home, if the minister leaves his home, and say, for example, goes to visit somebody in the hospital, and then perhaps even goes back home, can you count that mileage? And the answer in that question is yes. You’ll notice that that is a solid line from home to the hospital. Now, there’s also the possibility of home to church. You’ll notice that’s a dotted line. That means that I cannot count that as a business expense. I can’t count it, even if I go back that night for a night meeting, I can’t count it if I go to the church on a Saturday to do something, that’s always my commute, and it never can be counted as business. Now, I can go to the hospital, and that is counted as a temporary work location. Temporary work location. And so, as long as it remains a temporary work location, my church is my main location, that is a temporary location and I can count it. If I go to Walmart, not for my own groceries, but if I go to Walmart to purchase things for the church, say VBS supplies, for example, if I go and visit a member or prospect, I can count those miles even if I’m going from home. And if I have two jobs, you’ll see the dotted line from home to that job, that is commuting also. So I cannot count that as business expense. So that’s some of the rules about about mileage. Now, important note about expenses. If you have a non-accountable plan, it doesn’t meet these criteria that I’ve just been talking about, then, that’s just ordinary taxable income, and it’s included in box one of the W-2. And if the church does not report the money, the amount of money, the minister must report the payments as income. And if neither the minister nor the church reports the payments as taxable income, then it is considered an automatic excess benefit, subject to immediate sanctions of up to 225%. So, that’s very, very important. We want to do this correctly. And if we have a non-accountable plan, let’s say, for example, you just give the minister a car allowance. We’re gonna give you a car allowance of $3,000. And do I need to turn in expense reports? No. We just give you that as a car allowance. Now, if I tried to write that off on my taxes, since 2018, I’m out of luck. The IRS eliminated the possibility of unreimbursed employee, unreimbursed business expense as a deduction on our taxes. Remember that dual tax status, I am an employee, and I’m self employed for my social security purposes. So, it’s very, very important that we do an accountable reimbursement plan for our business expenses. And then, personal expenses paid by the church are taxable income. Some churches have paid for car insurance, that’s not one of the things that you can include as a business expense, for example, and that would just be regular taxable income. So, step one, we want to look at the need, step two, we want to have written policies, step three, we want to establish an accountable reimbursement plan for our business expenses, and then step four, we want to provide employee benefits, employee benefits. And so, this has tax advantages, it offers insurance coverage benefits that are appropriate for staff and needed by the staff anyway. And then one of the things that you’ll want to include are retirement contributions. And so, term life insurance, employee accident insurance, medical insurance, disability insurance and dental insurance, and retirement contributions, all those can be included as a tax free benefit if you set it up properly. And these cannot be set up from salary reduction, they must be done out of church budget at a policy of the church to provide these benefits. Alright, so, a retirement plan. So, a retirement plan, the best idea is from GuideStone, the church retirement plan from GuideStone. And you could have employer contributions and employee contributions. And the GuideStone has a wonderful plan for us and they’ve done a wonderful job with our money for well over 100 years. Now, let me say something here. We’re talking about small churches today. And so, just to give you a couple of examples, the average bi-vocational pastor in Alabama receives a salary of about 19,000 and benefits of about 1,500. And these benefits are actually provided by the church, not carved out of the employee’s salary. So, they do, even bi-vocational church provides benefits. And those are just averages, some are more, some are less, that’s just an average. But you can see that if the church is providing 1,500, they could be providing some retirement contributions, they might be providing some group term life insurance or disability insurance, or something of that nature. Now, when you get to a church of about 100 to 250 in attendance, then there are several thousand dollars on average provided in terms of benefits. And so, you can say that even a small church, on average is providing some employee benefits. And they’re doing this for the good of the pastor. Now, there are many different features. First of all, most ministers will want to do tax-sheltered contributions. This would be traditional contributions. And you save on taxes now, but the norm would be that you would pay taxes in the future when you do retire. One of the things that is really unusual out this third bullet, there’s no self employment tax for these kinds of contributions. So you’re saving on federal income tax, you’re saving on Alabama income tax, and you’re saving on your self employment taxes. And then the next bullet is that, housing allowance may be a part of your retirement income when you do retire someday. So, that means that for all of it are part of it, whatever’s appropriate, I can put that money in and save on my taxes now, it can grow, tax deferred, I don’t pay any taxes between now and retirement, and then I can take some of it or all of it out as a housing allowance. And that is wonderful. So that means that I put it in tax free, it grew tax deferred, and I’ll take it out as a housing allowance tax free. That is wonderful. Now, GuideStone does have Roth contributions. Roth means that, I would pay the taxes now, but I wouldn’t pay the taxes in the future when I do retire. And that’s a wonderful thing to do. For many Americans, that’s a wonderful way to do it. For younger Americans, it’s an outstanding way to do it. But the minister should do tax-sheltered contributions first. If he’s a great saver, then he might want to consider part of his contribution for Roth contributions. But he would not want to do all of it as a Roth, he would want to have some of it as tax-sheltered. So, we’ve got a wonderful plan, they do a great job with our money, and they also provide some extra benefits. These benefits are paid for by GuideStone and by the State Board of Missions. So there’s some disability income if the minister should become disabled. That can be up to $500 per month, for up to five years. There’s survivor protection, which is like life insurance. And it can be as much as $100,000, if something should happen to that minister when he was young. And then finally, there’s a matching contribution. That comes from the State Board of Missions. And it can be up to $17.50 per month, as long as the contributions are $105 or more. Now, for small churches, there is a Mission Church Assistance Fund. And it can be that, for up to five years, a total of $50 a month, this one comes from GuideStone, and it’s if that church has a budget of under $75,000 per year. So, next, step five, we want to determine personal income. And so, we want to look at inflation, we want to look at the Social Security COLA, which is a measure of inflation, we want to consider minister’s housing allowance, and we can take a look at housing allowance. So, the minister’s responsibility is to present an estimate of housing expenses. And in the booklet there’s an estimate there, and the church’s responsibility is to designate the amount prior to paying the minister. Review it each year, recorded as set until changed by official church action. And then you should consider the limits, but it’ll be really the minister who will need to know those limits. And there’s a form in the book, you can include your rent payments or mortgage payments, you can include down payment, you can include the taxes and insurance, utilities, furnishings, any kind of maintenance, repair, even remodeling, and all those things can be included as housing allowance. So, here are the six steps, and we need to put it all together in a plan, and there is a worksheet in the book that shows you each of the six. So, determine the needs, establish written policies, provide for ministry life expenses, provide for employee benefits, determine personal income, and then you just complete the summary. All right, this is our next presentation. If you want to follow along, there’s a PDF version of this at alsbom.org/ccs, alsbom.org/ccs. And I wanted to show you, first of all, some resources that we have. There’s the State Board of Mission, Church Compensation Services. So, that’s that alsbom.org.ccs. Here, I’ve given you the 800 number, my cell phone number or my direct line number, and email address. So contact me any of those ways that you prefer. And at that PDF, you’ve got this slide, so you’ll have that, it it’ll be handy for you. So, Compensation Services, that’s alsbom.org/ccs. Also, there, you’ll find the salary study. And you can find out what average salaries and benefits are for various sized churches. There’s a resource at One Great Sunday, onegreatsunday.org, click on the archive, and then 2018, and then finance. And we have some recorded webinar type things there that you can watch on various topics; taxes, on designated giving, on many different topics there. Follow the State Board of Missions on Facebook or Twitter for news and events. And then GuideStone is an outstanding resource, guidestone.org. And for the resources that we’re talking about today, GuideStone.org/compensationplanning. It’s a great resource of the things that we’re talking about. So, when I think about small church, many of our churches are bi-vocational. In fact, more than half of our churches are led bi-vocational pastors. And when you get to a size of, say 100 in attendance or so, you’re about in the top third of churches. So, churches in Alabama are generally small. We have a few very, very large churches, but we’re talking mainly about bi-vocational pastors. So, when I talk to a bi-vocational pastor, they always have several different questions. And their first question is, “Can all of my income be in housing allowance?” And actually, the answer to that is yes, if that’s appropriate for your situation. So, the Congress has never established what is a limit on housing. There is an ultimate limit, what is the fair market rental value of your home, if it were furnished, and then add to that the cost of utilities. But they’ve never established a percentage. Many of our bi-vocational pastors, it would be appropriate for them to have 100% as housing. They’ve never established a dollar amount either, because they just got to the point where I couldn’t, because there are some people who live in extremely expensive towns and places in states like California, New York, where housing is much, much more expensive than it is for us. So, there are no percentage limits, there’s no dollar limits on housing allowance. It’s whatever is appropriate for your situation. No percentage limit, it can be up to 100%, no dollar limit either. Now, then, I asked them a question, that should you have 100% as housing allowance? And my recommendation is, no, do not have 100%, have some as taxable income, so that you may participate in the church retirement plan. GuideStone says it this way, they say you must have a W-2 from a Southern Baptist Church to participate in the church retirement plan. The church retirement plan is the one with the extra benefits. Now, they do have some other plans available. There’s plans that perhaps a self employed person could participate in, like an evangelist, there are other plans for chaplains and other ministers serving another way. But for the church retirement plan, you must have a W-2 from a Southern Baptist Church. And that way you get to participate in those extra benefits. The survivor benefit, which is like life insurance, the disability benefit, and the extra dollar contributions that come from the State Board of Missions. Okay? If I have 100% as housing allowance, do I need a W-2? And actually you don’t, because you don’t have any taxable income, not for federal purposes. And so, the person who has 100% as housing allowance, he could have a memo on church letterhead, and that would work fine. He does not have to have a W-2. If I have some taxable income, do I need a W-2 or 1099? And the answer to that is W-2. The minister serving a church should never get a 1099. Now, if a minister comes in and he’s your evangelists, and he’s there for a week, he does a revival. Yes, he would get a 1099. If you have a supply preacher and he comes often enough to receive $600 for the year, yes, he should get a 1099. If you have an interim pastor who comes and preaches, now, he should probably get a 1099. If he is there and does other things, like visit the hospitals, meet with the deacons, meet with committees, things like that, then he could get a 1099. But if he does the other things, he could get a W-2. But typically, an interim pastor will get a 1099. But pastor serving a church must receive a W-2 if he has taxable income. And let’s say that the minister asked for 100% as housing allowance, and he says that my income is 19,000, I’d like to ask all of it to be housing. Can he do that? Yes. Would he get a W-2? No. But what if you give him a Christmas bonus of $500? That’s the point where that’s taxable income, and so he would have to get a W-2 at that point with the $500 in as taxable income. Okay, what other forms are needed? If the pastor is the only employee and has only housing, no additional IRS forms are required. You give him the memo statement for housing, your housing allowance was $19,000, 100% of which was housing. If the pastor is the only employee that has salary and housing, you’re gonna have to do a W-2 for him. You would not have to do quarterly reporting necessarily, but you would do a W-2. And then that calls for a W-3, which is a summary of all your W-2’s, and in this case, you’ve only got one W-2 to summarize. And then Alabama, A-3, is a summary of your W-2’s. And so, again, that would be a very simple form to do. So the pastor is the only employee and has salary and housing, those are the forms you would do. If there’s other employees such as part time secretary or say, music leader, somebody like that, that you pay, a nursery worker that you pay, then you must do a 941 each quarter, and the corresponding Alabama form, A-1, which is similar. Alabama forms are very simple, you do them online, and they’re very simple and quick to complete. W-2, not a 1099, and then at the end of the year form is W-3 and A-3. This time, if you had another employee, say a secretary, then when you summarize those W-2 forms, you would have two employees to summarize. So, what forms are needed? And these are the ones that are needed. Now, we need to think about paying somebody, paying anybody. And what are the things that we must do if we’re going to pay somebody? So, determine the degree of control that you have over the worker. We’re gonna determine, is this an employee, or is this a contract worker? So it’s all about control. If this person can come anytime they wish, they can do anything they wanna do as long as they get the job done, then that will be a contract worker. Of course, a minister serving at church is not gonna be contract worker because he’s got to be there on Sunday morning at the appropriate time for worship. And he can’t show up on Tuesday afternoon for worship and expect us to be there whenever he decides. Which party invests in the facilities used for the work. For example, let’s say that you had a pianist that you pay. Well, it’s the church’s piano, it’s the church’s music. So that means that it’s the church’s facilities, which means that that’s an employee. And then opportunity the worker has for profit or loss. Pastor just gets paid, he doesn’t have an opportunity for profit or loss, whether the employer has the right to discharge the worker, whether the work is part of the employer’s regular business, the permanency of the relationship, and the relationship the parties think they’re creating. Let me give you a couple of typical church examples. So, a minister, pastor, minister music, youth minister, those would be employees. Church pianist would be an employee always. Never give a church pianist a 1099. The nursery worker would be an employee paid by the church. The Secretary would be an employee. Concerning how you claim the church, that might go either way. So, if you say, we want you to be here eight o’clock Monday morning, you’re gonna work till noon, you’ll do the same thing on Wednesday and Friday. And while you’re here, we’ll have a list of things for you to do. Each of those three days, that would be an employee. If you just simply say to this person, we don’t care how you do it, when you do it, what you do, we just want the church clean by Sunday, then that would be a contract worker. The other one that can go either way is how you get the grass cut. And that could be an employee. We want you to cut the grass, we want you to do the weed eating. And then when you get through that, we want you to come in and help us move some tables and chairs. And you’ll get off at noon. And that would be an employ. But generally, most the time when we’re paying somebody to cut the grass, we don’t care what they do or when or how, as long as it looks good for Sunday. So, the very first thing, if we’re gonna pay anybody, then we determine if it’s employee or contract. Let’s say we’re going to have an evangelist this year, then that would be a contract worker, and we would need to be prepared to give them a 1099. Now, a lot of times we make mistakes in doing this. Sometimes we classify a contract worker who really should be an employee. For example, I’ve known of secretaries to be given a 1099, I’ve known of even those who are nursery worker or pianist who got a 1099. And those are just incorrect. So, if in doubt, the IRS and the Department of Labor are both leaning more and more towards classifying as an employee in the recent rulings. If a person does two jobs at the church, that person will be classified as an employee for both, unless there’s some kind of clear reason to do otherwise. So, an example might be, Mary is the church pianist, but Mary also operates Mary’s lawn service. And since that is a organized business, the lawn service could be given a check made out to the lawn service, and then be given a 1099, and she would get a W-2 for being the church pianist. But most of the time, if you have a person who does two jobs, then they’re going to get one W-2 that includes both. There are four forms that we need on each employee. Now, for now, I’m gonna be going down the road of these are employees. Later on, we will deal with the 1099 and the contract worker. But we determined that this is an employee. So once we determine as an employee, then we need four forms. Number one, the W-4 Federal withholding form. You can get that at irs.gov. Number two, the A-4 Alabama withholding. You can get that at revenue.alabama.gov. Number three, the immigration form; uscis.gov/I-9, is the I-9, immigration form. This form is one that is demonstrates that the person legally can work in the United States. And so, they are a citizen, they have a green card, they have some kind of work document that allows them to work in the US. The next one is E-Verify. This one actually does the same thing that the I-9 does, but it is done online. Uscis.gov.everify, or Alabama has a version of it that is supposed to be simpler than the federal version of it. And you’ll find it there, http://verify.alabama.gov. Then the last one is the NH 1 Alabama New Hire Form. You can find that at dir.alabama.gov/nh. These are the four forms that are needed, plus E-Verify. Now, let’s say that we’ve never done this before, then on your existing employees, you’ll want to do numbers one, two and three, one two and three. Even if that person’s been with you for years, but you’ve never done the immigration form, then you need to do that and have it. You’ll just have those on file. Those three are not sent anywhere, they’re simply kept on a file in your church office. Numbers four and five, E-Verify and NH 1, only do those if you have a brand new employee. Don’t go back and do those two on existing employees, only new employees. All right. So the most common mistakes, failing to do the forms at all. If so, start by doing the first three or current employees and keep them on file. Another mistake, failing to complete the forms on a minister. Remember, a minister is an employee for federal purposes. And so, the minister is an employee in every way except Social Security, and so you do want to do that on your minister. Another common mistake is failure to do E-Verify. In federal law, it’s voluntary, but in Alabama law is required. So, you must do E-Verify on all new employees. Now, we’ve determined that this is an employee, we’ve determined that we can obtain these four forms on that employee. And so, then we need to think about their wages and what we’re gonna pay them, what part is taxable, and what part is not taxable, like a benefit. So, I love the way that Frank Somerville says it. He’s one of the nation’s leading, noted CPA and tax attorney concerning churches and nonprofits. And he says, “Everything is taxable “unless the Internal Revenue Code says that it isn’t.” That will help us to understand these things, because a lot of times we think we’re gonna try to make it not taxable, and sometimes there is a proper way to do that and sometimes there’s not. So, I do have a chart in our financial issues, but I just wanna go over some of the basics. Income salary is taxable. Housing allowance is not taxable, but both salary and housing are taxable for social security purposes. But housing allowance is not taxable for federal and for state. Bonuses and love offerings are taxable income. And I always get the question from churches, “Is there any way we can make it not taxable?” Most of the time, there’s not. And even if you did benevolence towards a minister, let’s save that a tornado comes through and tears up his roof, and he’s got to have that replaced and your church helps out, that would still be taxable money. Virtually any money that goes from employer to employee is taxable money. What about business expenses? Are those taxable? Many churches are doing those incorrectly. Such as the car allowance with no accountability for that, that is incorrectly done, it’s taxable money, is got to be included on the W-2. Many churches are doing medical incorrectly, and we’re gonna talk about that in just a moment. Now, there’s several different ways to do medical that would be a tax free benefit. We’ll talk about those. And then other benefits oftentimes are done incorrectly, and so you’ll want to do it right. Some of the mistakes concerning what is taxable; failure to include bonus or love offerings. You got included on the W-2, don’t do a separate 1099. Do not list bonus or love offering in box 14 either. Is gonna be in box one if it is taxable. Failure to include any kind of gift card. A gift card that comes from the church is taxable. And treating as tax free the wrong type of health coverage. We’ll talk about health coverage in just a moment. And then, many churches have reimbursements. And according to our phone calls, most of them are doing it incorrectly. And treating the wrong kind of life insurance as a tax free benefit. That’s incorrect and that would have to be taxable income. Let’s deal with some questions. Let’s stop and deal with some questions for a moment. So, first question is, “Can a pastor’s complete salary be housing loans?” And the answer to that is, yes, as long as that is appropriate. So, many of our bi-vocational pastors make 19,000 on average, and oftentimes it would be perfectly appropriate to have that as 100% as housing allowance. Say a full time pastor is making $60,000, I’m just making that number up, can all of that be housing allowance? Probably not. Because the limit is the fair market rental value, furnish, plus utilities. So, for example, let’s say that this house would rent for $1,000 a month. And then let’s say it would even rent for $1,500 a month furnish, completely furnished. So $1,500 per month would be 18,000. And then you add to that your utilities, let’s say $4,000 in utilities, so that particular house, the fair market rental value, furnished plus utilities would be 22,000. And for that house, that’s all you can do. Let’s say that I need to do some improvements, I need to put a roof on or I need to replace the air conditioner, and I need to ask for $30,000 for my housing allowance, and spend $30,000 this year. But if the fair market rental value, furnished plus utilities is 22,000, that’s as far as I can go. So, it is possible that the complete salary could be housing allowance, if that’s appropriate for that situation. And the pastor will do the estimate and provide that estimate to the church to be approved. All right. Okay, should there be a W-2 if there’s only a $600 bonus? Let’s say that the rest of it is housing allowance, and there is a $600 bonus, then yes, you would do a W-2, you would do a W-2 for that. Let’s say that the pastor has a $15,000 housing allowance, he’s got $4,000 in salary, and then he gets a $600 bonus. So you would have $4,600 on the W-2, and you may include the 15,000 in box 14 of the W-2 if you wish to. We’ll talk about the W-2 in just a few moments. All right, next. Ministers who are receiving housing allowance, do they still need to fill out the W-4? Yes, they do need to fill out the W-4. If they were saving only housing allowance, there’s no money from which to withhold. So, they would fill out the W-4, for one thing, that’s how you get their name and address and their social security number, and they could write at the top of it, “Do not withhold.” Withholding is not required on a pastor. You may withhold if they have some taxable income. So, they would just fill out the W-4 and the A-4, and indicate do not withhold. They still need to do the I-9. If they truly are a brand new employee, they would do the NH 1 and the E-Verify. Alright, so those are some of the questions that we’ve got so far. All right, let’s talk about health insurance, because, this is where a lot of churches do it incorrectly. Back in 2015, is actually supposed to go into effect in 2014, but in 2015, the IRS said, insurance premiums paid by the employer for a group health care plan are continued to be a tax free benefit, but payment for individual plans is no longer tax free. Now, prior to that, employers, businesses, churches, they could provide individual insurance and considered a tax free benefit, but as of 2015, no more. So, there are some exceptions to that. So, the simplest answer is, you must have a group health care plan in order to count that as a tax free benefit. And there are some exceptions and there’s two new developments that have happened since 2015. So first bullet here, group plans remain a tax free benefit. GuideStone is group health insurance, even if you’ve only got one person on it. You and I can think of it as the group health care plan for Southern Baptist churches. But it remains a tax free benefit because it is group. Then, there is an exception for groups fewer than two employees. So for example, let’s say that you only have one employee who works 30 hours a week or more. Let’s say that that’s the pastor. And you could provide health insurance for that pastor, it could be an individual plan, and it would be a group fewer than two, and you can consider that a tax free benefit. Now, since 2015, we’ve got a couple of new health reimbursement arrangements. And one of them came about in 2017, and then the other one came about in December 2019, to go into effect in 2020. So, the first one is called Qualified Small Employer HRA. Qualified small employer, that means that there’s less than 50 employees. The QSE HRA is arrangement offered by the employer that meets the following guidelines. First of all, it’s funded by the employer. No salary reduction contributions are allowed. So it’s got to be done from budget, not considered salary, not done from salary deduction. The arrangement provides that the employee provides proof of coverage, and for payment and reimbursement, and for medical care expenses incurred by the employee or the family members. The amount of the payments can be 5,250 for a single, or 10,600 for family coverage. And you can set that up in your budget as health reimbursement and do that. So that’s a QSE HRA. Many churches, especially smaller churches are trying to do this, but they’re not doing it correctly, and therefore it’s not happening, and it’s just taxable money. The QSE HRA is done on the same terms to all eligible employees of the employer. So, like, for example, if you have other people who work 30 hours, let’s say the church secretary works 30 hours a week also, then you must provide it to the church secretary on the same basis. Number five, the employer may not be a large employer, and then you must have a written documented plan, a written document and plan. All right. So looking at questions, is counting software that you recommend for small churches? Very good question. And concerning accounting software, many churches use QuickBooks, and that does an excellent job. We do have one QuickBooks trainer in the state that I tried to utilize in some of our conferences, but she’s available for people to ask things. And so, that’s one that I would suggest. Also some of the big players in this space, like a ACS and and Shelby have developed some packages for smaller churches. But Mickey Crawford here at the State Board of Missions can help to advise you about, for your situation, what would be the best choice for software for your church. Okay. So, this is a Qualified Small Employer HRA. You’ve got to do it correctly, you’ve got to have written documentation, and in order to do this and have it as a tax free benefit. All right? Now, for 2020, there is another new HRA. And so, this is called an Individual Coverage HRA. And it has more flexibility. You can cover individual insurance premium and out of pocket cost. QSEHRA, the first one we were talking about, is only for the insurance premium. It may cover different classes of people, such as salaried and hourly, full time and part time can be treated differently in this. And it’s generally tax free, except for paying for things that aren’t tax free. Like, Christian sharing plan is not a tax free benefit. Okay? So, these days you can provide health insurance. You can provide, I’ve properly documented HRA like these two that I’ve talked about. And I’ll say that churches that average about 150 or so in attendance, many of them do provide regular health insurance as a benefit. But I’m offering these HRA as as ideas to you, if your church wants to do a certain amount, and you just can’t afford regular insurance. So, the HRA for 2020 called the Individual Coverage HRA has some extra flexibility. If you just want to cover individual insurance, the QSEHRA, the Qualified Small Employer HRA. So let’s take some examples. Mary Smith serves as a part time ministry assistant for the church. Her salary is $12,000. In addition, the church contributes $1,000 to her church retirement plan. Also, through salary deduction, she contributes 1,000 to her retirement plan. And the church provides $25,000 Group Term Life Insurance, and this is less than 50,000 in coverage, so there’s no taxable amount for her. And so, here’s what her W-2 looks like. It just looks like anybody else’s W-2 in the world or in this country. So, 11,000 is in box one. Remember that she put $1,000 into retirement plan that saved her on her taxes right now. And so, $11,000 goes in box one. In box three and five, we put 12,000. The a thousand dollars going into her retire plan, they don’t help on social security taxes. So you’ll see that 12,000 is in box three and five. Now, for box two, four and six, four and six, I’ve calculated the exact amounts, box two would vary. I just put an amount in there. Box too would vary depending on her situation being married or single or number of children she has, things like that. Then in box 12, we have put $1,000, that was her contribution into retirement, with code letter E. Code letter E stands for a 403 plan, which that’s what this is. And then down under state wages, we would have a $11,000 as well. The retirement contribution does help on your state wages as well as federal wages. So, this is what her W-2 looks like. And it looks like pretty much anybody who works anywhere in America. All right, now, here’s some common mistakes for what would be her W-2. Failure to include any kind of bonus or love offering, those would be included in box one, three, five and 16. Don’t put any kind of love offering in something like 1099 or box 14. And then failure to handle their retirement contributions. The employer contributions are not on the W-2 at all. You saw that on that W-2. Her $1,000 go into retirement. Were indicated, but the employer contributions were not. So, EE stands for employee, and the employee contribution are included in box three, five and 12, they’re not included in box one. All right, let’s look at the pastor’s W-2. This pastor is a minister of First Baptist Church, Anytown, in Alabama. He has a salary of 25,000, out of which he has requested 15,000 in housing allowance, and signed a $2,000 salary reduction for the church retirement plan. Church provides health insurance as a benefit and $1,000 contribution to his retirement plan also. The church provides $50,000 in Group Term Life Insurance through GuideStone. And you look at the table in the IRS Publication 15-B, and you’ll see that 50,000 in insurance has no taxable amount. And if it was more than that, there will be a taxable amount. And it tells how to do that in Publication 15-B. So, let’s see what his W-2 looks like. So, first of all, he started with 25,000, he asked for 15,000 as housing allowance, that would get it down to 10,000, he asked to put 2000 into his retirement. And so that would get the taxable wages down to $8,000. That goes in box one. And notice that I put box 12 code letter E, $2,000. That’s for a retirement account. Now, I also put in their code DD, which is for health insurance, and I put a made up number of $5,000. You’re not required to do that. And we’re recommending not to, I don’t know of any employers that are including that. If you have over 250 employees, you have to do it, but we’re not required to. So, the $8,000 also goes was down under Alabama wages. And so, in box 15 you’d have AL for Alabama and the employer’s state ID number, and $8,000 there. And if he had any withholding that would show up in about 17, any federal withholding would show up in box two. This particular minister did not do withholding. Notice on a minister’s W-2, the boxes three, four, five and six are always blank, always blank on an ordained minister. So, this is what it looks like. This is what the W-2 looks like. Okay, so common mistakes. Number one, failure to include bonus or love offering in box one and 16. A bonus or love offering, that’s just ordinary wages, and it’s is included in box one and 16. Don’t put the bonus or love offering in box 14, don’t put ’em on a separate 1099. You just include it in box one and 16. For an ordained minister, box three, four, or five and six are always blank. Now, you can’t use the word always with very much having to do with the IRS, but you can on this. For an ordained minister serving a church, box three, four, five and six are always blank. All right, some other mistakes. Improperly handling the housing allowance. If you want to put it on the W-2, it would go in box 14. You’re not required to put it on the W-2. The IRS says, in its publication they say, you may include housing allowance in box 14. You’re not required to, so if you’re going to, then you would include it there and label it housing allowance. Don’t put it in box one. Because if you add it to box one, that minister is gonna have to come to you and get you to do a corrected W-2. He cannot fix it, he cannot deduct it, he would have to get a corrected W-2. All right? Failure to handle the retirement contributions is a common mistake. The employer contributions are not on the W-2 at all. The employee contributions are listed in box 12 for the minister. And remember that box three, four, five and six are blank, so therefore, the employee contributions do not show up in those boxes. Another common mistake is that you have a non accountable business expense, the kind of car allowance type concept, and that should be about one and 16. Is taxable money, it’s just ordinary taxable income. So, you really want to do that correctly and have an accountable reimbursement plan for your business expenses. Now, if you had to add that into box one and 16, then he can no longer deduct that as a tax deduction. A employee unreimbursed business expense cannot be deducted any longer, so he’s out of luck, it would just be taxable income with no possible way to deduct it. Alright, number eight, improperly handling health reimbursements. So, you’ll want to provide a group health care plan. And one idea’s GuideStone’s Health Insurance.

If you can’t do health insurance, then you’ll want to do one of these other things like the HRA, which you could provide some tax free money towards his medical expenses. Those require a written plan, so you would need an expert to help you to write that plan. Once you get it written, it’s not very hard to administer. All right, so let’s look at a 941. A 941 is your quarterly report. And this would be one that if you had more employees than just the pastor, you would have to do a 941. Now, what if you had a pastor, he’s still a employee, and he wants you to withhold out of his paycheck for federal income tax and state income tax. You cannot do FICA on an ordained minister. You cannot withhold social security on an ordained minister. You just simply have to withhold extra in federal tax. So, let me give you an example about that. Let’s say that your a minister made $40,000, full time minister $40,000. And I’m just making this up. So, at that kind of level, $40,000, and let’s say he’s married, and he asked for 15,000 housing allowance, then he’s got 25,000 as taxable income. Well, a standard deduction for a married couple is almost 25,000 in 2020. So, he doesn’t owe any federal tax, but he is gonna owe taxes on the full 40,000, salary plus housing. And I’m just gonna use kind of an estimate thing of this, and say 15% of $40,000 is $6,000. So, you could withhold $6,000 over the course of the year, and you would have to withhold it as federal income tax. You cannot withhold it as FICA. And you would withhold it as federal income tax, and then when he does his tax forms in April, then that’s where it would all work out. And he would pay his federal tax and his SE tax, and it would all work out there. So, let’s look at a 941. If your minister was the only employee, but did want you to withhold, then you would have to do a 941. If the minister is the only employee, but he’s gonna do his own quarterly tax payments, then you don’t have to withhold. I mean, you don’t have to do a 941. So, number one, how many employees are there? And in our example, there’s two. The wages and tips and other compensation for a quarter, for just three months work. Well, remember his taxable salary was $8,000. We subtracted the house allowance, we subtracted the $2,000 that was going towards his retirement, and then you arrived it at 8,000, divide that by four is 2000. Now, her taxable wages, $12,000 divide that by four, and you get 3000. But remember that she’s putting money into her retirement account, and that does save her on her federal income tax. So, her wages for the quarter, 2,750, add those two together, you get 4,750. Now, between box two and box five, it’s not gonna match up, and that’s okay. Then we have federal withholding, and we just have a made up number there, but $600 for the year divided by four is 150. So, now down here under Social Security wages, then that’s gonna be the full 3,000. And we multiply that by 0.124, 12%, and then for Medicare wages, take the 3,000 times 0.029, and we get the amount of tax there. So, we add all this together, and it totals $459. And so, the $150 of federal withholding, plus the $459 of Social Security wages with tax withheld, and we arrive at $609 in this example. Now, you see that the 4,750 up there in box two, doesn’t match the $3,000 in box five, and that’s okay. You’ll never include any kind of minister wages down here in box five. I’m talking about ordained minister wages. All right, I’ll pause just a second, and we’ll see if there’s any kind of question. Okay, three, four, five and six are always blank even if he had bonuses. Yes, that is correct, that is correct. For an ordained minister, three, four, five six are always blank. If he had bonuses, you would include those in box one, for federal wages, you’d also include it down under Alabama wages in box 16. Okay. Let’s move on. Now, notice that Mary’s contribution to her church retirement plan did not reduce her wages subject to Social Security. It did reduce her wages for federal, but not for Social Security. Common mistakes: The minister should be included in the employee count, line one. This church example has two employees. The minister wages are included in box two, but not the housing allowance. Wages but not housing allowance. The minister of federal withholding would be included in line three if he requested. And this particular minister did not request it. The minister’s wages are not included in box five, all those lines five. Another common mistake is just simple addition mistakes, and then failing to deposit the taxes monthly or more often when required. Now, very small churches can often say it in the payment, but quarterly, if the whole payment is going to be less than $2,500. And you can do that.

All right? The salary, $8,000, yes, it is taxable, goes in lines one and 16 of the W-2. And if there were any Group Term Life Insurance, that would be included. But this particular pastor did not have any. Housing allowance of 15,000, not on the W-2, but it might be placed in box 14 if you want to. And some of the software programs will include it automatically. So, if it does include it automatically, that’s no problem, it’s just fine. The church retirement contribution of $1,000, is that taxable? No. Is it on the W-2? No. The church should check that little box in box 13 that says retirement plan. But the amount of $1,000 is not listed on the W-2. And then the salary reduction agreement, amount of $2,000, it is put in box 12. But for that minister, it’s not included anyplace else but box 12. Health insurance that is a group health care plan can be listed in box 12. But that’s optional, and most of us will do it. Now, we have gone all this direction about churches that have employees, and how to pay employees, how to give them a W-2, how to do a 941, just the basics of those things. Now, we’re gonna change directions and we’re gonna, what about the people who are contract workers? What about the people who are not our employees? And so, for them, we would use a form 1099. And this is kind of what a 1099 looks like. And we would use box seven, don’t use box three. So, in this 1099, it shows rents and royalties, and then it says other income. Well, doesn’t this sound like other income? Actually no, the one that’s more appropriate is box seven, nonemployee compensation, nonemployee compensation. And the difference is, other income, box three, is for winnings, can be court award, it could be gambling winnings. So, I don’t think we wanna use box three. But box seven is nonemployee compensation, so they’re being paid for work that they performed, and box seven indicates that they’ll have to pay their self employment tax of these wages, even though they’re nonemployee, but they’re receiving money that is for performing work. So we would use box seven, nonemployee compensation. Okay, additional steps. Alabama has A-1 for each quarter. Very, very simple, you just calculate how much you owe for the quarter, and did you send it in and so forth, and that’s about all there is to it. Alabama A-3 is the annual summary of your W-2’s. It’s similar to a W-3 for federal. The W-3, which is your annual, it totals the amounts on the W-2. 944 would be rare. A 944 is very similar to a 941, but it’s annual instead of quarterly. But you can only do the 944 if the IRS tells you to. So that would be very unusual. And then you’ll provide your 1099 to those who are not employees, and there is a 1096 transmittal form, and there’s an Alabama transmittal form which is a Alabama form 96. The 1086 and the 96 are kind of like your A-3 and W-3. It’s it’s a summary of your 1099s.

All right? Here’s some common mistakes. First, classifying is contract worker a person who really should be an employee. Second, a person who does two jobs at the church, a lot of people would just automatically give a W-2 for one job and a 1099 for the other job, and that’s unusual. Most of the time, you’re going to classify them as employee for both jobs. The next bullet there, recording non-employee compensation in box three. But for almost 100% of church situations, you’re gonna use box seven. If you had a plumber, painter, carpenter, AC guy, and you have to give them a 1099, then you’d use box seven. If you have an evangelist come, you would use box seven; they’re being paid for performing work. And then the final failure, and this is the most common failure, is failure to obtain a W-9. W-9 is a little half sheet of paper, gives you their name, their address, and are they incorporated or not? If they’re not incorporated, they’ll give you their social security number, if they are incorporated, they’ll give you a tax ID number for that corporation. If they’re incorporated, you don’t have to give them a 1099, but if they are a sole proprietorship or they’re a partnership often, you’ll often give them a 1099. And also their LLC, you would likely, most likely give them a 1099. All right, so some of the failures; be sure to obtain a W-9 on any person that you’re going to be paying. That just protects you, except an employee.

An employ, you’re gonna use the A-4 and W-4 to get their information. But on a person who is a contract worker, get the W-9 first, and it’ll tell you whether you need to provide the 1099. Here’s the problem that we run into; a church fails to get a W-9, they write the check and pay the person $700, for example. Then, at tax time, at the end of the year, they say, “Oh, we got to do a 1099.” And so, they start filling out the 1099 and figure it they don’t have that person’s social security number. And they try to contact the person, and can’t get ahold of him. Or he says, “Oh, sure, I’ll give you that,” and never does. Just neglects to do it, and you’re trying to run down this information that you got to have. Now, the IRS says you’re still supposed to provide a 1099 even if you don’t have a social security number. But your church will be penalized for providing a 1099 without a social security number. And then second, you are required to do backup withholding of 28% if you have no social security number. And how can you do backup withholding ’cause you’ve already written the check? And so, basically that backup holding is going to come out of the church budget, rather than out of that person’s wages. All right, let’s deal with questions. If there is a car allowance, can the minister still deduct mileage driven that might offset the allowance paid? And the answer that is, no. Pad, that’s a great question, important question for today. Back in 2018, when the taxes changed, the Congress eliminated employee unreimbursed business expense. Remember, this faster is an employee, not self employed. So, the car allowance is taxable income, then he would want to try to write it off on his taxes. And in past years prior to 2018, he could write it off or write off part of it prior to 2018. But since 2018, he can write off zero dollars.

That’s a very important thing. And it’s very important that we have an accountable reimbursement plan for business expenses. And that’s really one of the most important questions of the day, because, many ministers still think they can write that off, and they just can’t. All right, next question. The treasurer and secretary works from home on her own time, she only asked to pay bills, does she get a 1099 or W-2? It is likely in that scenario that it would be a 1099, surprisingly. So we could say that 99.9% of secretaries, financial secretaries, people like that, would be a W-2 employee, would receive a W-2. However, there are some unusual circumstances, working from home, on our own time, things like that, doesn’t matter when she works, just as long as the job gets done and paychecks are out and that sort of thing, then that could be loose enough that it would deserve a 1099 rather than a W-2. I do know a financial secretary that works for about three churches. And that’s her situation is that she works for three, she does it from home, she gets it done whenever she wants to, she delivers the forms and the paychecks and things like that back to the church. And she’s using using our own computer. And so that person could get a 1099 from each of the three churches. That is a great question and very important question. But most church secretaries who are in the office have to have certain office hours, answer the phones, things like that, they would be a W-2 employee. All right, go ahead.

Question 1

Hi, Brother Lee. Our question is, there’s three of us here at this meeting because this is something new for our church. We’re looking at getting our finances and that type of thing in order. If we do not have someone at our church who is capable of doing these type of tax forms, is there a place, a resource that we can go to, like you said, find somebody that would be willing to be your financial secretary to do this. We could do the treasury part, but when it comes to the tax form part, that’s all new to us. Are there resources out there?

There’s several different things that you can do and ways that you can do it. One thing is, from Brotherhood Mutual Insurance, that’s the property and casualty insurance that GuideStone has partnered with, there is a thing called Ministry Works, ministryworks.com. And they are a payroll service. They’re trying to serve churches, they’re not really trying to make much money, and they charge much less than most payroll services. And they can do your payroll, they can do your forms, they can do your W-2’s and so forth. You can go to ministryworks.com, and there’s a way that you can tell them how many employees you have, how often you pay, and things like that, and they’ll give you a price of what that would cost. And I’ll tell you, it’s surprisingly low cost. There are a few other payroll services. You could check those out. There are some people in your church likely who could learn this. We do these kinds of conferences, that’s number one. Number two, we’ve got on that onegreatsunday.org, we’ve got several different videos, videos similar to what we did today, some videos about contributions, about designated contributions, and so forth. And for a small church, it’s not terribly difficult, it is something you can learn. Also, if you use something like QuickBooks, it will do a lot of your reporting and you’ll just spit it out and send it in. So, there are many different ways to do it. If you really don’t want to do payroll, then ministryworks.com would be something you should check into. Good question, great question. Okay, there was one more question that came up. Does small church required to file any other kind of tax form, if we have only pastor with housing allowance, and a few 1099s? If the pastor only has housing allowance, then you would not follow any kind of federal forms, like like a 941 or W-2, but for your 1099 people, you will give them a 1099 and you would provide the 1096 and 96. Those three things would be very easy to do. And that would be for your contract workers like plumber, painter, carpenter, AC guy, evangelist, people who come in and do work for you. So, that’s the answer to that one.

Well, I’m gonna dismiss this. And I’ll hang around a minute, if you change your mind and have a question after we dismiss. But, thank you all for being here. Thank you for participating in this. And if there’s any way that I can help, you let me know. My number is 334-549-1383. You can contact me at [email protected]. And so, any of those means to get in touch with me, I’ll be glad to. Let’s have a word of prayer.

Thank you, Father, for today. Thank you for our blessings. Thank you for this time to share information and share information that is so important to our church. And Father, help us to do these things correctly. Help us to do these things to the best advantage of the pastor and other people and staff. We just ask that you would help us so that we might do it to the best advantage for their lives and for their tax situation. And Father, I pray for our churches, make them wise in what they can do in order to do their very best for their staff. Father, be with us the rest of the day and keep us safe. And we just asked her blessings on all that we do, in Jesus name, amen.