Should Churches Be Taxed Like Any Other Business?

[N_Quire]

I fail to understand why churches should have tax-free status. In exchange for doing social work and a bit of community building, churches are favored by government and given tax exemption. Many churches are run as businesses, some are as big as businesses and many a pastor/ lives extremely well for an organisation that pays no tax. It is time to make churches pay tax, as much tax as any other business pays. You shouldn't be exempt from tax merely because you believe in the supernatural and let the government off the hook with regard to social work and housing and feeding the poor.

 

[Zero]

If you tax churches, all of out taxes go down. Of course, like any other profitable business, churches are expert at evading lawful behavior.

 

[kyleb]

sure enough, flat tax all the way around. :)

 

[Dissident Dan]

No, kyleb, eliminate the loophole. A flat tax rate in not the panacea that you think it is.

Churches need to be placed under the same guidelines as other institutions. They should not get any special benefits just for being churches. If they want some kind of benefits for nonprofit stuff/community service, then they should be under some guidelines for all nonprofits/community servers.

 

[LURCH]

Originally posted by Dissident Dan
No, kyleb, eliminate the loophole. A flat tax rate in not the panacea that you think it is.

Churches need to be placed under the same guidelines as other institutions. They should not get any special benefits just for being churches. If they want some kind of benefits for nonprofit stuff/community service, then they should be under some guidelines for all nonprofits/community servers.

Now that I can agree with wholeheartedly. Any "church" that is pulling in large amounts of money and not giving it to the poor should lose their status as a "non-profit" organisation. Of course, I also feel rather strongly that they should lose their status as a "church", and be declared a "non-prophet" organisation.

 

[kyleb]

Originally posted by Dissident Dan
No, kyleb, eliminate the loophole. A flat tax rate in not the panacea that you think it is.

Churches need to be placed under the same guidelines as other institutions. They should not get any special benefits just for being churches. If they want some kind of benefits for nonprofit stuff/community service, then they should be under some guidelines for all nonprofits/community servers.

no Dan,i mean eliminate all the loopholes. if a organization is non-profit then they don't have income to pay taxes on, otherwise, they need to kick in their share be it a church or whatever. when you let people claim special exceptions everyone has an argument to make for their own; i don't care if they have god on their side or the are poor or whatever, excuses are like *edited for language that we should know better than to use!* and i just don't care to see any of either.

 

[Wasper]

Probably the reason why churches are free from tax is because the majority of the people in the government are Christians (ie Bush). Therefore they have the tendency to be less harsh on the Churches , and thus gives them tax exemptions.

 

[enigma]

Actually, the churches have always been tax-free (AFAIK). They've been that way to make sure that they (on paper anyway) cannot participate in the government or elections.

The BS which Bush and co. are trying to pull is giving grants to churches who provide social services. Problem is that there is no one monitoring the churches to make sure they aren't using that money to (for example) buy bibles for the downtrodden they're helping.

 

[Wasper]

The BS which Bush and co. are trying to pull is giving grants to churches who provide social services.

Isn't it interesting how these people tend to big religous bigots? In my opinion I believe that the government should never ever give money to any groups such as religion that will excludes other groups or people, especially when it's the money of the excluded people that are also being used here.

The only way churches/mosques/temples ect should receive money is by the donations from individuals from their own pockets , and not the government.

Problem is that there is no one monitoring the churches to make sure they aren't using that money to (for example) buy bibles for the downtrodden they're helping.

The exact religous bigotry that I am talking about. People like Bush don't give a crap about this , because it's not their money.