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I value the contributions of churches to communities. I think they should be taxed. I do not see a difference between them and businesses who provide goods and services to their communities through foundations or donations.
IMO, church run businesses that are in competition with another business, such as an exercise place should be taxed. The income from the business should be taxed.
My stepfather had a map of his town with all church owned property colored in red pencil. it was easy to see the huge amount of real estate that was not on the tax rolls.
A church in Dallas purchased a shopping center just to get the parking lot for Sunday mornings. IMO, they were in competition to rent their store space with every other shopping center owner in that part of town. IMO, taxes should be paid on that center.
I also would have no problem with limiting the value of the parsonage to a reasonable or average amount. Some of these million dollar parsonages are over the top. The community should not have to pay to get police, fire protection emergency services, water, sewage treatment, trash pickup and streets to a house that pays nothing for those services
Yes, I know Joel Osteen paid for his house with the proceeds from book sales and pays Houston property tax on it.
Every church in our area runs 'Pay to Park' and day care for profit. Not to mention all the land area they own. They should at least pay property taxes and income on the businesses they run.
Every church in our area runs 'Pay to Park' and day care for profit. Not to mention all the land area they own. They should at least pay property taxes and income on the businesses they run.
As long as you applying the same rules to every non profit organization you can do this. What you cannot do is single out churches.
They do not pay taxes on the funds paying to maintain buildings to spew their drivel.
If they did, I would agree with their right to spew such drivel.
"Drivel" is a matter of opinion, there is a lot non profits spewing "drivel" and which ones would depend on personal perspective. The law needs to be applied equally thus you don't get to pick and choose what "drivel" gets tax exempt status. you can complain about this all day long, the church will never lose it's tax exempt status unless it's engaging in practices that would lift that status for any non profit.
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