New Zealand Case Law: Decisions & Judgments | LexChat

Topic

Missionary funding

Legal area

Court

6 May 2020

THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS TRUST BOARD v COMMISSIONER OF INLAND REVENUE [2020] NZCA 143

Citation

[2020] 2 NZLR 647
Court

Court of Appeal

Payments by the taxpayers to the Trust Board are gifts for the purposes of s LD 1(1) because they were voluntary unconditional transfers to the Trust Board for its New Zealand charitable purposes, conferred no material benefit on the taxpayers (benefits were moral/spiritual or not materially linked), and there was no sufficient legal or factual connection between payments to the Trust Board and overseas payments of missionaries' basic costs to negate gift treatment; therefore High Court declarations excluding missionaries/parents/grandparents were wrong and are substituted to treat all such p…
4 Feb 2019

THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS TRUST BOARD v CIR [2019] NZHC 52 [1 February 2019]

Citation

[2019] NZHC 52
Court

High Court

WMF payments made by the missionary and by the missionary's parents or grandparents are not gifts under s LD 1 because donors obtain a material benefit — enabling the missionary to serve and have essential expenses met — which is directly linked to the payments; by contrast, WMF payments by siblings, more distant relatives and unrelated church members confer at most minor or moral benefit and therefore are gifts and deductible under s LD 1.