Should churches pay taxes?

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Holy crap yes.
Organised religion and its relentless quest for power is at the root of most wars throughout history and has been a vehicle by which people in power rule over us and get us to fight and die for their benefit. Accruing vast wealth power and territory.

Churches are (have always been) the spiritual arm of Kings and capitalists, Its an age old trick conning us into giving up our lives or wealth for the promise of a better life afterwards ; it soothes the fear of those afraid of the dark. Churches give us Gods permission to serve a King or country to kill and to subjugate others who have a different God in the name of our rulers and our particular God.

Churches are amongst the oldest richest and most organised money making scams on this planet.... hell yes they should be taxed...... but fat chance that will happen.
The problem is that they are some of the best financial experts on earth and have it so well stitched up that the taxes would still get back to the same 0.01% at the top (latter day Pharaohs). Many tax laws are based upon religious principles.

All the top spiritual leaders of history were against the love of money (root of all evil apparently) but guess what their pure ideas are generally manipulated by selfish or misguided individuals over time and the original ideas are generally warped into the business of retaining and/or expanding the power the churches/religions already have .... they are all massive money making machines. Wolves in sheeps clothing.

Sorry for the anti religious rant but you did ask!

I'd think it should depend on the particular church and what kinds of fundraising activities they're involved in. Clearly if a parish gets into the real estate and the rental/property management game then yes for that part of the operation. Similarly I think the same thing should go for Yale University if it's opening material handling companies and the like.

As for the social effects of taxing churches? I sometimes think that the tax exemption status is something of a card in the pocket of government. Take that away and every parish as a tax paying entity has all the latitude it needs to voice it's political opinion as loudly as it desires.

They seem to be doing that regardless.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/11/08/ ... +Recent%29

Regards
DL

Please direct me where the signatories of the US Constitution discussed how not taxing churches would be an application of separation of church an state, I'd would be happy to admit my ignorance. I don't see tax exemption in the first Amendment.

Btw the CoE enjoy the similar special status and more so and I argue against it. A subsidy/exception is not non-interference, on the contrary it is collusion.

I know that the signatories discussed topics as broad and forward thinking as "direct democracy", something quite populist now. They were smart enough to rule it out. For one it is not scalable, hugely expensive, a logistical impossibility to replace governance entirely with it and somebody has to set the referendum, however their main concern was majorities persecuting minorities.

Yes, but...
As poor individuals are exempt from income taxes, the same rule should apply to small congregations. Put the tax burden should be put on the huge mega churches that rake in millions of dollars, and pay their pastors an obscene wage.

The Establishment of the Church of England is a long piece of constitutional history, but it is worthy of note that during the last 150 years or so, the state has effectively co-opted almost all of the roles that the Church filled in society. Schools and hospitals are now organs of government, rather than the Church. Responses to homelessness and unemployment are state responses, rather than charitable ones.

That's not to excuse the constitutional arrangements in England (note that Bishops in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland do not sit in the House of Lords), but rather to point out that the relationship between the Church, the Crown and Parliament is more complex than the mere existence of the Lords Spiritual.

And then you would get into a situation where these mega-churches could legitimately argue that if they have to pay taxes, so do all other not-for-profits. The only fair way to resolve this would be to look at the books of all such organizations, secular and religious. If there are any doubts about their cash flow, tax them.

Wrong, The Church of England does have schools. This is obvious even to me because I see this written on the school sinage. The Church of England doesn't make a big noise about charity, why should they, but please do not think it is not involved. We do have many charities here in the UK. The high Streets are full of charity shops. Charities are big business, but the Church of England is not.

You may have caught on to the fact of its name Church of England, there is also a Church of Scotland and Church of Ireland. The Church in Wales is a more complicated matter.

Meet Kenneth Copeland.



18 000 sq.ft mansion.

He is a pilot(goD is his co-pilot no doubt ).

$20 000 000 USD Cessna Citation(fastest private jet avail.)

He has a FLEET of airplanes registered to the Church.

and drumroll pls......his OWN AIRPORT beside his 18 000 sqft. mansion.

TAX FREE!! !!

Truly, goD is GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!! !

This might get you on the right road: " In colonial times, New England settlements contained dedicated public space for schools and churches, which often held a central role in the community. For instance, the 1751 royal charter for Marlboro Vermont provides: “one Shear [share] for the First Settled Minister one Shear for the benefit of the School forever.”

So as you can easily see the churches, along with the schools, were given special status (no just the tax exempt rulings in the U.S. in 1895....look it up) going back to our early colonists and in fact:

1.The first recorded tax exemption for churches was during the Roman Empire, when Constantine, Emperor of Rome from 306-337, granted the Christian church a complete exemption from all forms of taxation following his supposed conversion to Christianity circa 312.

2.The law against churches intervening in political campaigns was passed by the US Congress in 1954. Since then, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been successful in using the law to revoke the tax-exempt status of only one church: the Church at Pierce Creek in Binghamton, NY, which had placed an advertisement in USA Today and the Washington Times rebuking Bill Clinton four days before the 1992 presidential election.

3.If the "parsonage exemption" on religious ministers' housing costs were revoked, American clergy members would cumulatively lose an estimated $2.3 billion over five years.

4.In spring 2010, the state of Oklahoma awarded tax-exempt status to a Satanist group called The Church of the IV Majesties.

5.According to former White House senior policy analyst Jeff Schweitzer, PhD, US churches own $300-$500 billion in untaxed property. New York City alone loses $627 million in annual property tax revenue due to 9,500 churches being tax-exempt, according to a July 2011 analysis by New York's nonpartisan Independent Budget Office.

So YES there is an exemption....you just have to look harder to identify it. And YES there is a law to dissuade churches from being involved in politics. But NO....our politicians don't have the guts to enforce laws that would loose them votes.

Not to be outdone, meet Creflo Dollar.(that is his real surname, no joke)

When his private jet had a malfunction he began to raise funds for...........a 65 MILLION USD Gulfstream jet



"The Gulfstream G650 isn’t just any private jet. The billionaires lining up these luxury jets, which sell for upwards of $65 million each, are willing to put their names on a waiting list for years just for the pleasure. It is the “Holy Grail” of luxury private jets, Bloomberg once wrote. And now, televangelist Creflo Dollar’s ministry has announced that it will also buy a G650, a purchase the ministry says is “necessary” to spread God’s word."
Source:Wash.Post

Creflo brings in $80 000 000USD/year, but raised the 65 million in only a few months.

Tax free.

ZenDen I was pointing out the founding fathers didn't broach this as far as we are aware and there is nothing in the constitution prohibiting taxing churches, so long as it is a non-discriminatory policy.

The principle of separation and non-interference as outlined in the first amendment isn't consistent with giving tax breaks to churches, that is what I was questioning.

As pointed out, income tax as we know it now didn't exist in those days anyway.

Hi 0=true.

You're right. And I pointed out that until the non-taxation was formalized by Congress in 1895, there was already a push by individual states in that direction, proven by free land being given and the lack of taxation of churches in individual states.

The following is from http://www.ProCon.org:

"US churches received an official federal income tax exemption in 1894, and they have been unofficially tax-exempt since the country's founding. All 50 US states and the District of Columbia exempt churches from paying property tax. Donations to churches are tax-deductible. The debate continues over whether or not these tax benefits should be retained.

Proponents argue that a tax exemption keeps the government out of church finances and thus upholds the separation of church and state. They say that churches deserve a tax break because they provide crucial social services, and that 200 years of church tax exemptions have not turned America into a theocracy.

Opponents argue that giving churches special tax exemptions violates the separation of church and state, and that tax exemptions are a privilege, not a constitutional right. They say that in tough economic times the government cannot afford what amounts to a subsidy worth billions of dollars every year."

But almost all churches violate the "separation" and should be paying taxes just like ordinary mortals.

Wait just a minute here! I belong to Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption Church and I resent the very idea that we must pay taxes...

I have some seeds to plant...