The church is broken up into several (a ton actually) separate corporate entities - you are right. This occurred around 1960 under the durection of N. Eldon Tanner and with the legal help of Elder Oaks. It was meant to shield the church from liability and protect its assets. Some of the corporations are for profit, others are non-profit.
However, "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints" is not a corporation at all. It isn't even an actual church or legal entity - it is a trademark.
Your tithes go to the Corp. of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints" is a trademark. It is not a church. It is not even a corporation - the name is a trademark owned by Intellectual Reserve Inc. - yet another corporate legal entity owned by "the church."
https://www.lds.org/bfs/0a_P13_disclaimera.htm and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Reserve. You belong to a corporation.
You will also notice that tithing slips have recently been changed. You may no longer designate how your funds can be used - for the education fund, temples, missionary, etc. The new slips clearly state that from now on it does go into one big fund that can be spent wherever.
The corporation is not the arm of the church - the corporation IS the church. The church is just a name tag worn by the corporation. The "church" is a business propped up by volunteer labor. They have hunting preserves costing thousings of dollars per hunter which feature an airstrip for the rich to land in private planes - these are run by senior missionaries.
https://www.deseretnews.com/article/770568/Tending-the-flock.html?pg=all
Bill Gates has donated more to charity and humanitarian relief than our church. And while some in this thread argue spending billions to build a mall rather than sending it to Africa, even when nobody is building malls anymore, Melinda Gates just pledged over $500MM for contraception for the poor.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/heal...tes-melindabre86a1du-20120711,0,2461524.story Aids and pregnancy related deaths are huge problems throughout the world and this will make a huge difference and save many lives. This will undoubtedly do more good for the temporal welfare of God's children than any mall. It will also likely save hundreds and thousands of lives.
You might find all this well and fine. But surely you can understand why others might be critical of the way the Jesus of the new testament has directed his modern day corporations to spend billions on Utah real estate development over the past 6 years and only $1 Billion on charity for the poorest of the poor over the past 30 years throughout the world.
If you truly cannot understand why many outside, and within, our church are critical of our church's financial organization then I don't think there's much else I can add.
Edits-so many errors in original. Hopefully all corrected.
