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Churches teach of God, School teach also. Schools are taxed, why not Churches and other entities who teach of God.
This question should not be thought of as an attack of any sort against any Church. I recognize their community standing and am happy to have them around.
I speak here of taxing only profits, like any other entity.
Should we tax Churches et.all.?
So let's go ahead and tax churches. But I can promise you that any and every church can easily show a zero profit at the end of each year.
The only taxes that would be collected are property taxes. And the problem for any and every city/county assessor is the nightmare of determining what an appropriate value would be, for a property that cannot be used for anything other than a church.
This topic has come up a number of times and I believe that there is such a wide variety of churches with different agendas that I don't think it would be fair to tax all of them as if they were all the same. What I'm getting at is the megachurches who are in it for the money are very different from the little neighborhood churches who are just scaping by. In fact the great majority of churches in America are filled with locals who attend a nearby church in which the pastor is making a very low salary. It would be difficult to do but I think we should consider taxing the churches which are clearly businesses designed to make a profit and leave the little neighborhood churches alone. Here's the problem though. All of these little churches have been losing membership for many decades while the multimilliondollar megachurches have been gaining huge increases in membership. It's a trend that's happening all over the country and I don't think it's a good one. The megachurches have state of the art technology and many amenities that a little church could never afford. Of course this is happening in big cities as opposed to small towns but I'm sure that this business model of success is going to influence even the smallest churches in small towns at some point and I think we will need to take another look at the concept of taxation as religion becomes a business.
Surely you're not suggesting that honest, god-fearing people would cheat on taxes?
You don't have to cheat to show zero profit. All they would have to do is give a lump sum to some mission somewhere, by December 31st, to balance out at zero.
Not sure of the USA, but here they create trust funds which would be similar to your NPA's, thus a pastor could draw a salary from the church and subsidize it from the trust fund.
At the church I was at, they had at least 7 different banking accounts through which funds were "moved" and they had a trust fund - friends of the pastor are employed by the trust.
Most churches that I am familiar with are profitable businesses.
In theory they are non-profit; but they raise money, have salaried employees, bank accounts, etc.
I say tax them.
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