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"You see, we are not like the many hucksters who preach for personal profit. We preach the word of God with sincerity and with Christ’s authority, knowing that God is watching us. " 2 Corinthians 2:17
America's wealthiest pastor avoided paying more than $150,000 in annual taxes on his $7 million Texas mansion, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Kenneth Copeland, a famous televangelist who founded Eagle Mountain International Church, built a six-bedroom mansion near Fort Worth in 1999.
Copeland is worth $750 million and owns multiple properties and several private jets, the Chronicle said. The jets are housed at a nearby airport named after him.
Under Texas law, pastors' homes, known as parsonages, can get a 100% exemption from property taxes.
Local authorities said Copeland is within his rights to claim the house as a parsonage, even though the law was likely never intended to cover super-rich religious figures like him.
A guy who's damn near a billionaire living in a palatial mansion with a fleet of private jets dodging property taxes in the name of the Lord. He must be reading a different version of the New Testament than the one in my book. I remember a part in my version where Christ went just a bit into a rage about just such things. Using the Temple for monetary purposes.
This looks a bit to much like exactly what invoked the fury of Jesus Christ Himself. These televangelists are a sorry lot. Rich, but sorry. I guess the thing about a conscience is being rich enough to afford to have someone else carry it for you.
Location: When you take flak it means you are on target
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Meanwhile the IRS plans to hire 80,000 collectors to track the incomes of low income gig workers and folks using Ebay who earn over $600 a year. Forcing more people onto the govt dole.
Tax exempt status of these charlatan churches needs to be stopped. Virtually all these evangelist ministers are crooked.
Or just eliminate the tax exemption for all religions altogether.
I am not saying I agree with what he is doing, but just because one pastor in a church lives on an estate worth millions the other hundreds of thousands of churches, synagogues, and mosques must pay the price? Yea seems like a typical liberal "one size fits all" approach.
I bet the reaction would be different if this was a pastor in the AME church.
"You see, we are not like the many hucksters who preach for personal profit. We preach the word of God with sincerity and with Christ’s authority, knowing that God is watching us. " 2 Corinthians 2:17
Guy is clearly an expert at gaming the system and by making this a church owned property he is doing just that.
They should change the law so that going forward this is restricted, although he'd be grandfathered.
P.S. If you remove the religious taxation exemption, you probably need to do it across ALL non-profits, so while it's a popular point of discussion from time to time it always fizzles out.
Guy is clearly an expert at gaming the system and by making this a church owned property he is doing just that.
They should change the law so that going forward this is restricted, although he'd be grandfathered.
P.S. If you remove the religious taxation exemption, you probably need to do it across ALL non-profits, so while it's a popular point of discussion from time to time it always fizzles out.
True but a simple revision of
change *0
to -$5000
Solves the arguments about the local pastor that does marriage counseling and charity work and makes $52K a year being nuked.
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