Churches (religions) do not "need" or deserve tax free status.

[SoCalDem]

I don't care whether they are right OR left leaning.. The time has come to strip them of their tax free status.

They are all acting like PACs and corporations, and either they all move to Bermuda (yayyyy..I'll bring boxes & tape) or they pay their fair share..

I am sick of them masquerading as "caretakers of the soul", while they are really just fronts for politcians and political agendas..

Churches SHOULD have a credo , and I have no problem with them preaching from the pulpit that certain things are forbidden by their religion, but I am sick and tired of having to READ their every pronouncement about why this candidate or that, should not get the votes of their congregation.

They are TRIPLE dippers.. they get donations from their flock..they get tax exempt status, and they are receiving (or are eligible for) faith-based tax money as well.. Most churches own real estate, and except for the storefront churches in poor areas, mots are very well off..

If they want to maintain their exemption, they should butt out of politics.. The instant they sponsor/recommend/support a candidate, or denigrate/chastise/badmouth a candidate, they should start writing those checks to the IRS..

This is just another way to funnel/launder/hide campaign contributions to candidates who will "hopefully" do their bidding.

"Back in the day", churches were often poor, and the communities relied upon then for many more things than they provide now.. they truly performed a service.. These days they are not performing those services (as a rule)..

[demosincebirth]

1. They should take away

their tax exempt status only if they delve into politics

[whirlygigspin]

2. Amen sister

let's get a bill going on this

[Baltimoreboy]

6. LOL

The party wouldn't survive a drive like this. You forget, lots of Democrats are religious.

[James T. Kirk]

14. Your avatar is Frederick Douglass.

I wonder if he would have been in favor of taxing churches or opposed to letting religous beliefs influence politics. I don't think so.

[SoCalDem]

3. Exactly..

As long as they stay in the sould business, they can keep their status, but guys like Falwell and Robertson & the others like them spend more time talking politics than anything else, and they should be forced to give it up..

That's why we also need to rename the republican party.. They have morphed into the CFP...Christian Fundamentalist Party.. They need to be called what they ARE..

[tritsofme]

5. IIRC correctly, people like Falwell and Robertson

who are in business for profits and for electing only Republicans have had their tax exempt status stripped.

If you strip tax exempt status you're not harming the comfortable middle class churches in Orange County, you're putting into jeopardy the existence of poorer inner city churches.

If a church maintains its nonpartisanship and abides by all the regulations that all other non-for-profits abide by it should not be discriminated against.

[Warpy]

15. Add to that the tax exempt status on their commercial property.

It's all very well and good for a church to own an apartment building on land they bought for future expansion of the church. It is not very well and good for them to collect rents and pay no taxes.

[Baltimoreboy]

17. Except that they use that money for church work

[Roaming]

21. I agree, only yank the tax exempt status if politics become involved.

I think it benefits society to give them tax exempt status in that they do a lot of good that benefits everyone, not just people who attend that particular church. Soup kitchens, drug programs, homes for unwed mothers, youth centers, emergency food pantries, etc., etc.

[izzie]

4. when they buy up half the inner city and do not have to pay tax.

Many colleges pay tax as the understand that they use the city services but the churches just bleed us dry. I recall the Southern Church that came into Alaska, when I lived there, handed out folders on who to vote for and got into a lot of trouble. I can not believe that many in the GOP like the right wing church moving in on their party. It is interesting to watch what is going on. I hope we will not become a church/state.

[beachman]

7. um, maybe some of you have not followed democratic efforts at the polls

You do realize, in some elections, that a critical effort to get the vote out for democrats comes from the involvement of African-American churches?

What you are talking about would, for example, mean stripping those churches of tax-exempt status.

Better to just let sleeping dogs lie.

[RC]

8. This needs to be addressed.

This is one sacred cow that needs to be slaughtered. If a church wants to make political statements, let them set up a separate organization for this that is not be tax exempt.

The instant any tax exempt religious organization makes or endorses a political statement either from the pulpit or through literature available by the front door or when the church does a mass mailing, their tax exempt statuses should be revoked till they can jump through the proper legal hoops again.

[SoCalDem]

9. Right OR left...It's wrong..

If people are so naive that they have to be told by their pastor, they have not been paying attention..

It always "bothers" me when I see a white politician "getting down" with the black churchgoers......P H O N Y !!!

They all know it's phony..and we all need to stop it..

if the individual churchgoers want to invite a candidate to their homes or a separate venue, that's one thing, but I HATE to see it inside the churches..

[noonwitch]

18. Exactly-where do you draw the line?

Democratic candidates attend church services, especially in black communities, prior to elections. This has been the case for quite a while. I attend a church that politicians, mostly dems, show up at around election time (J. Granholm, D. Stabenow, D. Bonior, C. Levin, and D. Kucenich have all been there at some point in the past two years). We also provide a building for just about every 12 step program you can think of to meet in (free), have blood drives and food donation programs for the community and offer many other spiritual and educational opportunites to the community and the membership at large.

There is a large fundamentalist church nearby, that I assume allows the Christian Coalition to distribute their voter guides. They have similar community outreach programs and do a lot of good in the community. Neither organization blatantly advocates for any candidate, but both have ties to political organizations and espouse a definite philosophy toward social issues.

I'm opposed to taxing either one, and would like to continue to be able to claim my offerings as a tax exemption. I have a slightly different attitude about tv ministries, in that if their political and fundraising (and commercials, if applicable) add up to over 50% of their air time, they should lose their tax exempt status. In otherwords, TD Jakes, who for the most part sticks to preaching, would keep his exemption, but the 700 Club would have to make some changes in order to keep theirs.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

10. Can't paint all churches with the same brush

My Sufi order will NOT take a political stand, one way or another-heard it directly from our Pir (title for head of an order). There still are religious groups out there who concentrate on the work of the soul for the benefit of mankind.

Perhaps the thing to do is to require all churches doing political actions to create a PAC which is seperate from their other activities. Or allow those religious organizations who do not do political actions to be tax exempt service organizations.

[Nlighten1]

11. I agree completely...

They need to pay.

[Nlighten1]

12. I agree completely...

They need to pay.

[beachman]

13. not sure taxing churches is Constitutional

The establishment clause states Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibit the free exercise thereof.

I think the reason churches are tax-exempt has to do with the notion that they are in some respects an independent authority and government in religious affairs, and that taxation restricts religious expression, and even that Congress does not have the right to tax churches.


Churches for example do not have to apply for tax exempt status. It is not a right that is considered granted to them by the government so they need not apply for it.

[Mike Niendorff]

16. I agree: no tax-exemption for religious status

I have no problem for tax exemptions based on actual charitable works, on community service, and other specific actions. But simply because something is part of a state-recognized "religion" is not reason enough, in my book.

Furthermore, I can't for the life of me comprehend why all these "small government" wingnuts are perfectly happy to let the government decide what is -- and what is not -- a "legitimate" religion (upon which they then confer an advantaged tax status). I personally believe that it is completely and totally beyond the legitimate authority of any government to issue rulings on whether a religion is "legitimate" or "illegitimate". Seems to me that most "small government" types should agree with this, by definition. That is, of course, unless they find it to their financial advantage to look the other way (which, of course, they do).


MDN

[Az]

19. I disagree

Taxation equals your right to have a say in the government. One of the keys to our revolution was taxation without representation. Pay taxes and you have the right to have a say in the government.

There is also a further problem. While we are aware primarily of the larger dominant religions a tax on religions would squash the smaller religions forming. These may not be anywhere near as domineering as the mainline religions and may simply be people gathering together with a shared set of beliefs about the world around them.

Taxation of these smaller organisations can be very destructive in the free minded forming of social structures. Tax the churches and in effect you tax freethought. Texas is already trying to do this by trying to tax the Unitarian Universalists. Their religion is too loosely defined for the conservative christian in charge of determining what passes for a religion in Texas.

The larger churches can more easily weather a tax than the smaller upstarts could. And in the end it is the upstart religions that pose a greater threat to the mainline churches than any tax ever could pose.

[Stuckinthebush]

20. Easy now...left wing churches benefit from this status as well

For instance, my UU church would be in a world of hurt if we were not tax exempt. In fact, we may not be able to do the amount of justice work that we now do in our community. That would be a tragedy.

As long as the church refrains from delving into politics, then the tax free status should remain.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. I also say "Be careful what you wish for"

I've been on the governing board of a church, a small downtown parish that was hanging on by its fingernails and which did a lot of good work with very little money. We had to pay salary and benefits for a fulltime priest (we tried it with part-timers and it didn't work), other part-time support staff, such as a secretary and a janitor, as well as massive utility and repair bills on an old building.

So it would be no loss if it went under? Hah, tell that to the street people who depended on that church for Tuesday lunch and Saturday breakfast, as well as donations of clothing, or to the AA and NA groups that met there free of charge or to the four refugee families they sponsored in ten years.

And I was in one of the smallest downtown churches. The larger ones had things like free respite care for Alzheimers patients, literacy programs, daily sandwiches for the street people at noon, transitional housing for former street youth, blanket and sleeping bag distribution for street people who refused to go into shelters, sponsorship of refugees, low-cost mental health counseling for people without insurance, mentoring for people transitioning off welfare... You name it.

There's a newspaper for street people in Portland called Street Roots, and each issue contained a pull-out supplement about available services. The vast majority--over 90%-- of the programs offering food, shelter, clothing, vocational counseling, and other services for the poor were offered by churches. If the program had a religious requirement, the paper noted that, but very few of them did.

Sure, there are a lot of scammers out there, who go on TV and persuade elderly widows to hand over their money so that they can buy another Armani suit. There are the suburban megachurches, which run virtual country clubs as part of the "total information environment" for their flocks.

But that's not the average mainline church. They're not triple-dipping in the sense that the contributions from members are their ONLY income, unless they're a brand new parish, in which case they are partly supported by their local governing body--which in turn is supported by quasi-taxes from existing local parishes.

I'm currently in a large downtown church in Minneapolis, and the pattern continues: feeding the hungry, distributing clothing for poor people who need to go to job interviews, serving as a winter shelter, sponsoring refugees, organizing teams for Habitat for Humanity, and probably a lot of other things that I haven't heard of yet.

In inner city neighborhoods, the Catholics and Lutherans provide low-cost alternatives to the public schools.

By the way, some secular people believe that clergy do not have to pay income tax or FICA. This is absolutely not true. I was a preacher's kid, and my father had to pay income tax just like everyone else.

It seems to me that the people who keep saying "tax the churches" have little contact with actual mainline churches and are basing their assertions on distant observations of fundamentalists.

[kysrsoze]

23. Exactly - you need to think about all the good they do

In Chicago, churches are closing left and right (many being turned into condos) b/c they cannot bring in enough money to get going. These churches still make significant donations to public charities and other churches in need, and host food kitchens, Alcoholics Anonymous and other neighborhood outreach programs. Many of them need significant structural improvements to keep going.

Our own church charges rent on the rectory next door so they can pay for the mortgage on the church to pay its half-million dollar reconstruction costs. About 5 years ago it almost closed due to lack of funds. There are only four paid members (subject to FICA withholding) including the pastor - everyone else donates time and money. We also work with other denominations (Jews, Muslims, etc.) to promote cooperation between them. Churches are not allowed to apply for most architectural or reconstruction grants. Why would you want to tax something like that? They don't make a profit. BTW - They still pay property taxes.

RW Fundie churches absolutely suck, but it's foolish to lump them all in together. Sounds like you just have a problem with religion.

[Az]

25. Churches are just people in action

And as history shows us sometimes active people can do bad things as well as good things.

Taxing the churches is a bad idea. For a multitude of reasons. At the most basic level a church is just a group of people organised around shared ideals or beliefs. To place a burden of tax upon this structure is taxing freethought. Its taxing association. Its taxing the exchange of ideas.

Unfortunately there are oganised structures out there that want to exert their developed power on others. These organisations need to be brought under control. The wall of seperation that protects their development has to be maintained in both directions.

[Cheswick2.0]

24. So you don't believe in the Separation of Church and State?

Ps......Most churches do not have a lot of money, only a few of them do.

But I am curious, why do you have to read their pronouncements? Is someone giving them to you?

[Mr. McD]

26. Appraise the Lord: Tax church property

I couldn't agree more.:)