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The Big House has many rooms.

May 04, 2010

Anthony Jinwright, the Bentley-borne pastor of Greater Salem City of God church, is likely to find himself living out the gospel of Matthew ("I was in prison, and ye came unto me."), whether he likes it or not. A federal jury yesterday convicted him on 13 charges.* His wife, Harriet was convicted on four charges.

Rev. Jinwright was accused of failing to report $1.8 million of taxable income, helping to support a lifestyle that included a Bentley, a Maybach 57, a BMW 530i and five Lexus vehicles.

Flickr Creative Commons photo by jorbasa

His defense attorney commits financial accounting blasphemy with this argument (via The Charlotte Observer):

"The kingdom of God is not run on generally accepted accounting principals," Hinson said during closing arguments. "Thank God. If it were, we'd all be in trouble."

Does that mean Heaven has already adopted IFRS?

Anthony Jinwright, who endured about 11 hours of cross-examination last week, testified during the trial that he didn’t understand he’d been underreporting income.

He said he trusted his financial advisors to get his taxes done correctly, and promised to pay his fair share in the future. Earlier, under questioning from his own lawyer, Ed Hinson, he testified that he’d been so busy traveling across the state and nation preaching the Gospel that he’d neglected his personal finances and those of his church.

Prosecution witnesses testified that they had warned Rev. Jinwright to report the items as income, perhaps leading the jury to believe that his tax problems weren't entirely a result of excessive missionary zeal.

UPDATE AND CORRECTION: Assuming a top rate of 35%, evading taxes on $1.8 million in income means a "tax loss" of around $630,000. Federal sentencing guidelines for a tax loss of that size start at a 33-41 month sentence. I had earlier mistaken the $1.8 million income evaded for the tax loss. My apologies.

*Earlier version of this post had the wrong number of charges for which conviction was returned.