Tax churches

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https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petiti ... n=shorturl

So those 6 guys who signed the pettition (don't do it if you are not a US citizen) are working based on this logic: http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.ph ... ragun_32_4

and this: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyat ... witterfeed

This does not mean "tax religious charities". But to stop assuming that any donation to church is a charity donation. It is not like that. There are Churches out there doing political work even. So, I think it is true. It is unfair that churches get away with not paying taxes.

There is no way in (imaginary) Hell that churches will EVER pay taxes.

One time it seemed impossible women would vote. Or that gay people would be able to get legally married.

If activism begins now, then maybe in 2052 we'll have some progress.

Is that the FSM I see in your avatar?

I can't agree with the numbers used in that calculation, nor do I care for using "drug money laundering" in the analysis.

Also, the analysis seems to treat labor expenses of a church as some sort of "administrative overhead". From my experence, those "employees" are dedicated to helping people, not all of whom are of the same religion.

I really think the petition ignores the secular benefits of religious institutions, even if they don't want to consider the religion element.

I support requiring ALL charities to have 3rd party reporting of charitable contributions (just like mortgage interest and tution payments).

The churches have too much power for anything meaningful to change.

I mean, one of them runs an entire state, a major university, and one of the largest civic organizations in the US.

If you're in the for-profit business, you should be taxed. There are churches that sell merchandise, they own businesses, they're actively making money that are not from donations and they make more than most small businesses (over a million dollars a year). Those churches should be taxed. The small ma-and-pop churches should not be taxed. It's only fair.

If I recall correctly, a state has already started to tax those sort of churches. I forgot where though. It was several months ago.

Extremely few churches are involved in politics. Even big churches usually don't have enough wiggle room in their budget for politics. Even if they are moving millions, there's more pressing things for the money to go to. Contrary to popular belief, being a pastor (as opposed to a TV con-artist) is not a form of venture capitalism.

Religious establishments should get no more special treatment than any other company.

It's not a company, it's a non-profit.

I find that really hard to believe. Otherwise we wouldn't have such ridiculous organizations such as NOM, Focus on the Family, or pretty much every so-called Marriage or Family organization that devotes far too much time to fighting political issues such as gay marriage and abortion. Even the Mormon church was known to put in a ton of money to ensure the passing of Prop 8. Rest assured, if a church or religious organization is strongly against something politically, they will put a ton of money into whatever campaign is fighting it.

If you are so eager to see a lot of clergy (already struggling for survival) driven to poverty, go ahead and support this 'cause'...

The easiest solution is don't go to church. Over the past century, I believe the numbers of parishioners who actually attend have been rapidly declining, and this trend will probably only continue.

Those are non-profits, but they are not churches. The political money tends to come from people who go to church, but without the political funding going through the church. While the mormons are a notable exception, political money tends to make it's way to PACs in a grassroots way. Churches tend to be made up of fairly like minded people who often fund conservative political causes, and they talk amongst themselves and decide to send money to causes apart from their contributions to their church. The only tricky part is that churches frequently support humanitarian causes, and those can't always be cleanly separated from politics, but that's usually not the fault of the humanitarian groups- the government does a stellar job of turning everything it touches into crap!

i think that they should be able to be tax-exempt but they would have to fit normal non-profit exemption requirements.

A company (or firm) can be run for profit or run as a non-profit.

ruveyn

In fact, amongst Christians it's really only the black churches in places like London and Birmingham and the Polish Roman Catholic churches that are still popular.