I assume it’s not a publicly traded company. Yet it is in business to make a profit. I imagine a portion of the profit is put back into the business to generate more revenue. Who gets the rest? Is there a board of directors? Are there privately held shares?
I was under the impression that the Church itself kept the profits. I see no reason why they would pay dividends to shareholders, as that would decrease the power of the church. However, this doe snot preclude the payment of exorbiant executive salaries…
The Church of Scientology is a not-for-profit religious organization. It can make profits, but all the profits must go back to support the functions of the Church as an institution. In this it is no different from any other not-for-profit religious establishment in the U.S. As a not-for-profit, it cannot be “in business to make a profit;” that’s a contradiction in terms.
If the Church’s money-raising or distribution violates not-for-profit statutes or IRS regulations, a variety of penalties can be imposed, either on the Board of Directors or officers, or by stripping the Church of it’s tax exempt status. I know of no statute that says merely that earning money in is any way illegal, however.
It’s not so simple to define “THe Curch of Scientology”. The structure is broken up into a lot of independent entities. critics say this is to keep the structure and ownership opaque, to allow non-profit and for-profit segments, and to minimize damage to the entire organization in the event of problems with one part.
see, for instance, this page:
http://www.xenu.com/archive/IRS/corp_veil.html
And the items on this page in general:
Here is a list of tax-exempt entities with names containing the word “scientology”
Part of the genius is that not everything contains the name “Scientology”. Try “Religious Technology Corporation”, for instance.
The Church of Scientology has had its tax exempt status revoked in a few countries. Both in Australia and the United States lengthy court battles debating the tax status of the Church.
As for who gets the profits of the church, who knows. The “Religious Technology Center” owns all the Church’s licenses and trademarks which had been personally owned by Hubbard before his death. Also, before his death Hubbard resigned control of the church to established leading members. These leading members presumably control the “profits” of the Church nowadays.
As for where the Church’s money comes from, the Church earns money from members who pay specific amounts for Church lessons. The criticism here is that the amounts increase as the level of the lesson increases - to rise in the church you have to continually pay more and more.
As CalMeacham said, by deliberate design the structure of the Church is rather convoluted which makes it very difficult to understand how it functions financially. The best bet is that a small number of elite Church members earn a sweet salary, and the rest is invested into increasing Church size.
Right. I was trying to support your point about independent entities. I guess I should have said that this list was not intended to identify all scientology-related entities. The purpose was to show that just a quick search of the tax-exempt roster using the most obvious search term turned up 20 entities. As you say, there are for-profit entities and those with names that don’t suggest a connection.
Doe snot?!?! Was that intentional??? 
No.
A fraud-ian slip?