Ala. charity did not report promised back pay to Moore as income to IRS

An Alabama charity that was once helmed by Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore did not report to the IRS that it promised him nearly $500,000 in back pay in 2011, according to a Washington Post report.

Tax specialists told the newspaper that the guaranteed payment should have been reported to the Internal Revenue Service as income, which would then garner a tax bill of more than $100,000.

Moore and his campaign have not responded to questions about whether he paid the taxes, and he has not released his tax returns.

The newspaper reported on Friday that Moore received a promissory note worth $498,000 or an equal stake in a historical Birmingham building owned by the charity.

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A board member for the charity, the Foundation for Moral Law, said Moore told him that his accountant directed him to report the income only after he cashed in on the promissory note.

“I feel sure that he told me that he had talked to his accountant about it and the accountant felt it wouldn’t be taxable,” said board member John Bentley, a state circuit court judge.

Several tax experts told the Post that the promissory note would have been taxable as soon as it was received.

“Compensation can be anything. It can be chickens. It can be property. It can be cash,” one tax expert who was shown the documents said. “It doesn’t make any sense to me why they’re not reporting it as taxable income.”

The newspaper previously reported that Moore had arranged to take a yearly salary of $180,000 from the charity he founded to promote Christian values in government.

When he left the foundation in 2011, it was unable to fund his promised back pay, and instead gave him a promissory note for the money or a stake in a historic pre-Civil War office building the charity purchased and renovated for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Moore told a jury that same year that his salary was not a “regular” one from the foundation but rather a “special project” he set up.

“My salary does not come by way of a regular salary from the Foundation, but through a special project that I run so that I don’t inhibit the Foundation,” Moore said in August 2011.

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In a statement to the Post, Moore’s campaign ripped the previous reporting of Moore’s promised compensation from the charity but didn’t dispute any specific points.

“The story was full of all of the same distortions and innuendos that characterized past political attacks on Judge Moore,” the statement said. “Voters in Alabama can see through the sleazy tactics of the Washington Post who are trying to discredit Judge Moore.”