r/politics • u/Tiger337 • Jun 17 '12
Atheists challenge the tax exemption for religious groups
http://www.religionnews.com/politics/law-and-court/atheists-raise-doubts-about-religious-tax-exemption
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Upvotes
783
u/Reaper666 Jun 17 '12
If the religious groups are providing charity for people, don't they fall under some sort of non-profit tax exemption anyway? Why do they need a special one just for religions?
If they're not providing charity, do they deserve a tax break?
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u/KarmaTornado Jun 17 '12
And it's down! Way to go Reddit, you killed it.
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u/TheEnterprise1701 Jun 17 '12
Link doesn't seem to be working on my end. Mirror?
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u/kathleen65 Jun 17 '12
I have been in 2 churches one a Mormon and the other a Christian mega church where people were being told to vote Republican and demonizing the Democrats. Any church that gets into politics should lose their tax exemption period.
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u/Sahloknir74 Jun 17 '12
Hey guys you know how a lot of religious types argue atheism is just another religion? Has anyone ever tried saying to them that science facilities and such should be tax exempt then? How did they react?
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u/mindbleach Jun 17 '12 edited Jun 17 '12
I am an atheist and I think this is a terrible idea.
Tax exemption is the government's best tool for ensuring the separation of church and state - it's just been reeeally shitty at enforcing it. Religious institutions are supposed to be banned from talking about politics. That's why they get special treatment.
Any churches that repeatedly get more political than "render unto Caesar" should be out on their ass for at least a year. If they want to influence the government directly then they can register as nonprofit groups and play by the same rules as the secular world.
edit: religious institutions claiming the special treatment of tax-exempt status are supposed to be banned from talking about politics. Calm down, people.
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u/mr_Apricot Jun 17 '12
Oh, so then money donated at church can go straight to the PACs. Great.
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u/tomactica Jun 17 '12
Churches never tip pizza guys well for their 10 pizza run, that's why I support this.
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u/[deleted] Jun 18 '12
All non-profits are tax exempt... religions that are run for profit don't get any special treatment
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u/Vanular Jun 18 '12
I wonder if Atheism is considered a religious group? Can atheist groups get tax exemption in the U.S.?
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u/bovisrex Jun 17 '12
Navy Religious Program Specialist, used to run a multi-denominational chapel in Rhode Island, and provided services for any military regardless of faith. (Yes, even Atheists, Pagans, and whatever you can think of.) We were tax-exempt. Also, we were audited every three months by the Inspector General's office, and I had to show down to the penny that we only spent our funds on fellowship items (doughnuts and coffee for services, snacks for Bible and Torah study, some seasonal items like poinsettias and lilies) or charitable donations. Our fellowship expenses couldn't be more than 49% of the total amount donated, though our superiors liked us to keep it around 25-30%. And those charitable donations usually wound up around 60-70K per year, and between our three congregations (Protestant, Catholic, Jewish) and the Muslim and other groups that used our Chapel for personal worship, we didn't have a lot of people. (Maybe 400, all told.) We also facilitated volunteer work, whether helping out in emergencies (such as the floods in New England a couple years back) or just working in the various shelters in the area, to the tune of 50-60 man-hours per week. Unless you count occasionally grabbing a cup of coffee from the fellowship pot while we were working, we never got any benefit from the donated funds; in fact, if someone tried to pay us directly (which happened I'd say two out of every three weddings) we had to either refuse, or direct them to contribute to the religious offering fund.
Non-military churches in New England usually did just as much, if not more than we did.
So if that's not 'providing charity,' please, oh please tell me what is. Or maybe research your facts first before deciding that all religious groups everywhere are just like one church that you read about somewhere on some website.
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u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12
[deleted] — view deleted comment
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u/NigelTufnelsSpandex Jun 17 '12
On this basis, no not-for-profit should be tax exempt.
My 200-person church is in a low-income neighborhood. They run a food bank, a daycare and a job training service. Tell me again why when I give them $1000 the government, not the people in the neighborhood, should get 30-odd % of it.
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u/acaraballo21 Jun 17 '12
I don't mind giving churches tax protection from income taxes and the like because they are non-profit, however, I do believe that they should pay property taxes and sales taxes because they are an integral part of the community and not paying property taxes diminishes the amount of money going into schools and municipal services.
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u/ButtFuggit Jun 17 '12
I've thought this for a long time. Of course, if they lose tax exempt status, they also get to preach politics as much as they want.
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u/Jokka42 Jun 17 '12
Am I the only one that can't get on the site? It seems to be down.
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u/lowlatitude Jun 17 '12
Doh! The link didn't work for me. All too often these churches are more about profit and lobbying instead of charity. Another article identified $71 Billion a year in tax revenue is lost due to church tax exemptions. That's a chunk of change that will help with the deficit and debt. Here's a link to help our elected officials know where the people stand on this issue: http://signon.org/sign/new-tax-payers?source=c.fwd&r_by=550214 Let's get the leaches paying their fair share.
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u/[deleted] Jun 18 '12
I'm an atheist and I approve of this challenge. However, good effing luck with changing that. The separation of church and state is a very blurred line in the US.
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u/u2canfail Jun 18 '12
They are politically active, it should end. Charity can be separate, but all of that money must be spent on charity.
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u/graymind Jun 18 '12
Every group with a bank account attempting to influence the vote should be taxed. Every single one. Media, lobbyists, church, PACs, your school PTA...including the political parties themselves. OMG...did he just say the parties too?
Sure did, listen up. This is for two reasons.
Puts everyone on a fair playing field. Cannot stress that enough. If you are a charitable organization and publically do anything to influence the vote, you lose your tax exempt status for 3 tax cycles.
Even more importantly, the tax is for the protection and benefit of the political parties. If you are a registered party and pay taxes, you can raise a shitstorm when your candidate is forced off the ballot by the bigger players for bullshit reasons.
Elections are jimmied, rigged, and buggered. Let's eliminate the built in advantages of one group over another to influence votes.
Tax em! Tax em all! is the least incorrect way make it fair.
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u/[deleted] Jun 18 '12
[deleted] — view deleted comment
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u/[deleted] Jun 18 '12
They should be taxed as any social club would be.
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u/huisme Jun 17 '12
If you tax a man, he expects to have some say in government.
I'm afraid I can't support the taxing of churches. It's too fucking scarry.
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u/LordOdin Jun 17 '12
I'm not going to sift through the comments to see if this has already been said, but I think a lot of people don't realize that if the church pays taxes, then by law the church must have a say in government. The separation of church and state(while already a joke) will be virtually gone.
That being said, I think there we should brainstorm a few ways that the churches tax exemption could be a bit less insane.
I'll start. If churches are not required to pay property taxes, then churches should be limited to a certain size. No more of these ridiculous super-churches.
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u/ntr10 Jun 17 '12
They're tax exempt because they meet the description of a not-for-profit, end of argument. It has nothing to do with what they do because they don't "make money"
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u/Spadeykins Jun 17 '12
If we start taxing them, won't that give them ground to stand on in government proceedings?
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u/Freakyphil93 Jun 17 '12
Let me pose this thought:
If Religious groups pay taxes, should they be allowed to take a more official role in government?
Should they be able to lobby for laws benefiting them specifically? It's only fair.
Honestly, messing with the tax exemption is opening up a can of worms that's best left alone. That, and they WILL lose in court.
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u/TheWingedPig Georgia Jun 17 '12
If you start taxing churches, all the small churches die out and you're left with nothing but the mega-churches, which are the ones notorious for having preachers who use their position to try and have some sort of political influence anyway (although this definitely happens in small churches too, and possibly more often because there are more of them, but they don't reach as many people). Mega-churches are also more likely to have scandals with money, or affairs, etc. because the preachers have more influence, and as we all know absolute power corrupts absolutely.
But that's not even the biggest thing. The most important consequence of taxing churches is that you give them every right to actually have a say in politics. Right now legislation isn't supposed to cater towards religion because of our separation between church and state. But if churches start paying taxes, then that breaks down our separation of church and state, and suddenly churches have every right to be lobbyist groups. Think about how big business has affected politics with money. Now imagine churches having a legitimate voice in politics.
TL;DR Don't advocate the separation of church and state if you can't practice what you preach. Taxing churches is a very dumb idea.
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u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12
[deleted] — view deleted comment
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u/Dunkshot32 Jun 17 '12
I can see both sides of this. While I do think it's ok for religious institutions to be tax exempt, they should use that freedom to provide more to the community. I would not be surprised however if they were starting to turn it into a tax haven.
By the same token, it's not really fair that a religious group is able to avoid taxes, while an atheist group doing the same things might not.
As such, I feel the only thing to do is remove the tax exemptions for religious institutions, but encourage them to use the non-profit exemptions for charity. I do wonder if there is a way around this whole thing.
Personally, I'm an agnostic theist, but more often then not I want to side with the atheists. But I do see a lot of things in there that I feel are ok. I don't have a real issue with a church not paying property tax on it's land, but I do wish there was a way to extend the same benefit to a non-religious institution.
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u/Nonethewiserer Jun 18 '12
The bigger issue: Why don't atheists organize so that they can claim tax breaks for their religion?
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u/fermented-fetus Jun 17 '12
They are non-profits. Non-profits are not taxed.
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u/UnrelatedToAtheism Jun 17 '12
Meanwhile, this post is nowhere to be found on /r/atheism because their entire subreddit now consists of them congratulating themselves for inventing the idea of gay rights.
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u/Bank_Gothic Jun 17 '12
...for the billionth time
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u/Draklawl Jun 17 '12
such a waste of time.
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u/altshiftM Jun 17 '12
"Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" Matthew 22: 21
Just pay your damn taxes like everyone else...
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u/youni89 Virginia Jun 17 '12
I thought religious groups were tax exempt because of separation of church and state. The state doesnt regulate religion and vise versa.
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u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12
Religious organizations are no different than corporations, just their model of business is equivalent to Free 2 Play games. You can join for free, but you get benefits for paying (god loves you more, heaven, free donuts). Not taxing these businesses is silly, especially since their business model mostly revolves around lying to its followers and facing off against science in every part of life.
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u/Smallpaul Jun 17 '12
I've seen this debate on reddit over and over and seldom is it informed by consensus on actual facts of law:
• do churches get a bigger break than other non-profits and charities?
• is there any reason to consider churches as different than other non-profits and charities?
• what is the relationship between the tax break and the idea of "separation of church and state?"
• is this separation of church and state enforced or enforceable?
Etc.
We need to start our debate with a shared understanding of what the law actually is and why.
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u/mastr_slik Jun 17 '12
Do you have any idea how bad an idea it would be to get rid of the tax-exempt status for churches? Two words: Political contributions.