City Harvest Church continues to come under fire from skeptical Singaporeans on ST Forum over its purchase of Suntec stake

City Harvest Church continues to come under fire from skeptical Singaporeans three weeks after it announced that it has bought a $310 million stake in Suntec to be used for its worship services.

Since then, more than a dozen of letters have been published in the Straits Times Forum questioning if City Harvest Church should still be considered as a charity and if the returns from its property investments should be exempted from tax.

Two letters are published today in the Forum on the matter alone.

Ms Tan Saw Bin who is an auditor of several charitable groups wonder if “significant involvement in commercial activities by mega churches, through investments in properties, still qualify the churches as charities under the Charities Act and their Constitutions.”

She urged the authorities including the Registrar of Societies and Commissioner of Charities to “look into statutory compliance and evaluate if such religious groups still qualify as charities.”

“New Creation Church and City Harvest Church are registered as charities but not Institutions of a Public Character. This means that donations to these churches are not tax exempt, so donors do not enjoy tax deductions of 2.5 times. Nevertheless, I am impressed by the ability of these churches to obtain significant donation income, which is a feat few organisations can match,” she added.

Another Singaporean Harvey Neo pointed out the blurring of lines between a religious group and its associated business entity in reality:

“For example, the initial start-up funds for the business entity could come entirely from the church. Tax-exempt funds from the church might also be diverted to the business entity in indirect ways.”

He stressed that the problems arises when “the associated businesses of a religious group balloon to such an extent that one starts to forget the raison d’etre of religion and begins to wonder where the profits of such businesses go to.”

City Harvest Church was founded by its Senior Pastor Kong Hee in 1989 as a small Bible study group of 20 and has since ballooned to a mega Church with more than 33,000 members.