(The Center Square) — A nonprofit operated by a Detroit megachurch pastor recently amended six years of tax filings after The Center Square reported the eye-popping salaries the original filings listed for him.

Since 2020, Perfecting Community Development Corporation has reported salaries for Pastor Marvin Winans that more than doubled in that time and exceeded $500,000 last year, according to Internal Revenue Service filings.

But a day after The Center Square published its findings about the salaries last week, Winans told his congregation that those federal reports are wrong.

"I have never received a dime from Perfecting Community Development Corporation," he said, according to a video published by his church.

Winans did not respond to repeated interview requests from The Center Square in recent weeks, including an email that also detailed all of its findings before they were published last week.

Instead, Winans called a Tennessee financial services firm that prepared the filings and directed it to amend them after the article published.

The firm — Chitwood & Chitwood, which specializes in church finances — contacted The Center Square and said it had wrongly listed the compensation for multiple employees as a single salary for Winans.

John Walker, an employee of the firm, said the errors were the result of limited information from the nonprofit's payroll company and a lack of communication among Chitwood employees over the course of years.

"It's just that simple," he told The Center Square. "It's a mistake that we made."

Winans, the nonprofit's president, signed each one of the original IRS reports before they were submitted to the federal government, the documents show.

By signing them, Winans agreed that: "Under penalties of perjury, I declare that I have examined this return ... and to the best of my knowledge and belief, it is true, correct and complete."

Knowingly submitting false information in tax filings is a felony that is punishable by up to three years of prison and fines of up to $100,000 or more depending on the circumstances.

Inadvertent mistakes can incur daily fines that — over the course of years — have the potential to total tens of thousands of dollars.

The IRS declined to comment about the situation for this article, citing law that prohibits the disclosure of IRS information about individual people and organizations.

The annual tax returns of nonprofits are public records.

More errors

Chitwood & Chitwood recently provided amended tax filings for the nonprofit to The Center Square that changed the salary information and also listed different people as leaders of the organization starting in 2020.

Chitwood said it submitted the amendments electronically to the IRS on Friday. The firm further provided confirmation numbers that appear to match the IRS' format for the 20-character confirmations it generates.

The original filings listed Winans' salaries in three distinct sections per filing. Those are gone in the amended filings, and instead the figures now appear under "other salaries and wages," which is for the total income of non-executives.

But the amended filings still indicate elsewhere that the nonprofit has no employees. Jennifer Nixon, accounting director for Chitwood, did not respond to questions about whether that also was an error. She separately provided a list of 15 people she said were paid by the nonprofit in recent years but that record did not show how much they were paid.

Among the people on the list is VeronCia Daffin, who in a grant application to the state of Michigan is listed as the nonprofit's executive director. Such "key employees" are generally required to be listed on the tax filings along with their salaries, but her name does not appear in Perfecting Community Development Corporation's filings.

Nixon did not respond to a question about that omission, and Daffin deferred questions to church leaders who deferred to Chitwood.

The amendments also include significant changes to the organization's leadership. Previously, four people had been listed as its directors, including Winans. In the new filings dating back to 2020, two of the other three people are removed and four new names are added.

And the amended filings still list Winans as working 20 hours per week for the nonprofit even though Walker, the Chitwood employee, indicated to The Center Square that Winans "doesn't work there."

"So, the 20 hours on Marvin should have been zero," Walker said before the amended filings were produced.

He described the 20-hour figure as "an estimate" that was used in lieu of precise information from the nonprofit: "Nobody told us how many hours the man worked."

Winans signed all of the amended filings before they were submitted, according to the documents Chitwood provided to The Center Square.

'Our stuff is perfect'

Chitwood & Chitwood has operated for more than 80 years, and its clientele includes about 8,000 churches, Walker said.

He described the company's verification process as "foolproof" and said: "We don't prepare wrong tax returns. I mean, we just don't do it. Our stuff is perfect."

About 10 years ago Chitwood was fined by the state for advertising certified public accountant services without having any certified accountant employees, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

The newspaper reported in 2020 that the firm's leader, Michael Chitwood, said the company doesn't directly employ certified accountants but pays them on contract.

It's unclear whether that has changed. Walker, in two telephone calls last week with The Center Square, identified himself as an attorney. Later, a woman who answers the incoming telephone calls at the business said he is an accountant.

Walker did not respond to interview requests this week to clarify his position with the company and answer other questions about the amended returns.

Last week he said it was Perfecting Community Development Corporation's responsibility to verify all of the details contained in the errant IRS filings for the past six years.

"They should have checked it," Walker said. "They're the ones that should have checked it and signed off on it before they mailed it in."

Cindy Flowers, chief operating officer of Perfecting Church, which is affiliated with the nonprofit, said someone did review the errant filings and noted the salaries listed for Winans but didn't question it.

"We don't know what belongs on what, based upon all the information that we send them," Flowers told The Center Square. "So, we see it, but the assumption is that it belongs there because they are the accountants that prepare the returns."