Montreal is taxing churches (2017)
montreal.ctvnews.ca
montreal.ctvnews.ca
So perhaps US should loose the rules for secular non-profits to be on the same level as churches?
I don't know about Canada, but in the U.S. churches are still where communities meet, where people connect with the spiritual world, and also the ones doing most of the "heavy lifting" on any kind of charity activity.
They are also generally nice and reasonably centrist-progressive, meaning treating everyone respectfully, nor expecting you to sit through a sermon like the old days. (I heard of one place where this may have been the case, but never saw it myself.)
Food Not Bombs might have a weekly freegan cookout, but most of the e.g. feeding people, distributing donated clothes, counseling without having to do paperwork first, food banks, and so on, are done by churches, or church-like organizations, or by people who met at church. There are some exceptions, like in Western Mass and a few places in the Catskills.
Source: Traveled around the U.S. with no base income. I don't go out of my way to take advantage of these things, but I'll go if a friend is going.
In the USA, this is quickly becoming an obsolete understanding of religion. Regular church attendance is down from 70% to just over 50% in the last 20 years, according to Gallup.
People are leaving the churches. The real question is what will replace them. If people need community, build community centers. There are other solutions that do not rely on continuing to provide tax exemptions to organizations that more and more people are fleeing.
From 70% to 50% is such a large change in 20 years. For this to be caused by a change in _parenting only_ would mean that probably every child born 38 years ago until today never attended a church. (this data counts adults, so they would only start counting when they turned 18). That seems very unlikely.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/248837/church-membership-down-s...
USA is highly uneven. In some states like Florida you can see churches on every other corner, and they are very active and developing, serving not only as community centers, but also as halls, child day care, hospitals, schools, galleries etc. No freaking "community center" can replace that.
Could you elaborate?
Doesn't your complaint have more to do with the USSR than it has to do with community centers?
For example: https://southperth.wa.gov.au/our-future/projects-and-places/...
I didn't even realise there was a connection to Russia until he brought it up.
The concept was good and they did work. In many towns, it's usually the only place where you could run cultural evens,some more important community gatherings and so on. What did happen once the Soviet occupation ended, was the lack of funding of these places. The town I grew up in, 15k population and the culture center large enough to be suitable for a pretty large city,so the maintenance costs are substantial. That's where people go for theatre,concerts,and so on.
As for the churces, they do a lot of charitable work, however my own experience with churchgoers in many countries is that it's too often ' It's our way or no way at all'.
The.. local municipality funded by the same local community as your churches?
> Churches in USA are not nearly the same as in most other countries. They are funded bottom up and also have to survive by serving their community well.
Where do you think other churches get their funding? Where do you think municipalities get their funding?
I don't recommend going to your church when you need to go to a hospital. Go to a hospital. Doctors spend 12 years in school for a reason. The best outcome is that someone may do some first aid and call you an ambulance. The worst is you may die because you wasted time.
As a child of a relatively poor family, I spent a fair bit of time there because the local government sent us a catalogue a couple times a year detailing all the programs they were running which due to our income level were more or less free (being a whopping $30 or something otherwise).
Based off this and your other comments, it seems a more visceral reaction to the phrasing “community centre” than that you have any real argument against them.
>just over 50%
k
(I feel like the glib single-character response stands on its own, but more verbosely: yeah, the trend isn't good, but a) there's no reason to assume it's linear, "fair-weather believers" is a thing, and b) I'm not a TIOBE follower, but let's say java use was 70% 20 years ago, and down to just over 50% today. Is "obsolete" the word you'd use?)
Yes, I stand by my words. If you read them again, you'll see you are arguing with something I didn't say.
If 29% of religious people have left the church (50/70=71% still attend church)... then that is a major shift. It would be foolish to continue with previous assumptions about the role of churches going forward without taking into account how religious people are changing their behaviors.
So what if, in order to accommodate the changing role of the church in America, you prevent the other minority religions and minority communities from ever having their centers grow in the same way churches were able to?
Granted I've always been the last person to know where the party is and still don't know where to buy weed in a state where it's legal if it hit me in the face, but what I do know is that if I ever wanted to meet people the last two places I would go to is the local community center and church like it's 1971. In my experience, joining a hospice social club would be an equally bright experience.
Community centres are an order of magnitude more expensive than providing tax breaks to churches.
The people are paying one way or another, the question is whether public society will fill the gap or leave it to commercial businesses.
That is one part. However, it is naive to assume people would pay the same for community services.
The other is most of the church work is at heavily discounted rates.
My hourly rate is $160/hr in my day job and I do about 10/hrs a week for my church at $20/hr.
Does your typical government worker ever do such heavily discounted work?
(The problem is that the only way to keep the lights on in these churches is to appeal to people in their 60's and 70's, but programs geared for that age bracket will turn away people in their 20's and 30's, and deprive the church of new people, new perspective, and new funding. These kinds of churches are slowly starving to death, victims of simple attrition.)
It's going to go against the grain at hackernews, but taxing churches in the US is a terrible idea. If you wanted to further the divide between the "liberal city"/"conservative rural" American cultures, this would be a great way to do it.
If you grew up in a rural area of the flyover states you would know that churches form the backbone of these rural communities. For example, the church in my hometown organizes youth gaming nights (yes, D&D style), widow support groups, and hosts food drives along with so many more things. They're so poor that every year they have a board meeting and the board divides up the operating expenses that are unpaid and they pay them out of pocket. The board members are 'well-to-do' community members with job titles like firemen and teacher. If they were not tax-exempt, they would have to shutter.
This is not to condone or justify the negative impacts that some churches have on this country, and religion often serves as a cloak for a lot of bad cultural habits like racism. I understand why people want to combat abuses of the non-profit status of the church, but taxing them is not the way to accomplish this.
In any case, my broader point is that tax law for businesses and other taxable organisations is not as simple as "we didn't make a profit and therefore pay no tax this year", and therefore as someone who isn't a qualified tax accountant, I can't really say with much accuracy what impact particular changes to tax law are going to have on the overall financial position of an organisation like a church.
Same may be going on for churches too.
I'll happily to make an exception for any church that is truly run as a genuine non-profit charity, and most income really is spent on good work in the community - not on investments and buying really nice things for the pastors.
But that's going to exclude most of these businesses. Unless that changes they won't get any sympathy here.
I remember watching the collection round at a church once. Pensioners who literally had breadline incomes were all putting significant amounts of cash onto a plate - for the Catholic Church, which is literally one of the richest and longest established businesses on the planet.
I will never, ever forgive that organisation for leeching off its poor devotees quite so shamelessly. Likewise for any other church with significant wealth.
I would find that especially galling.
Land and buildings for one could be taxed. Churches bought or were given land ages ago, before there was a Manhattan or Boston, as we today know it. Go ahead and pay property tax on land worth $250 Million when you barely make income to keep the lights on.
That’s how some cathedrals are managed in europe for instance.
It absolutely has not survived millennia. What you call your Christian church today would be unrecognisable to the faithful of a century ago, never mind two, or five, or ten, or twenty. Or are you acknowledging that Christianity is the cult of Mithras, and that it’s still a death cult?
It has severe financial issues at the moment - maintaining the courtyard alone costs £1k a month. I’m waiting for more detailed finances on that.
Maintaining finances for any organisation is a basic bread and butter protection against corruption. I don’t see what harm there is in taxing religious organisations the same way as any other charity.
By "millennia" you mean "at most 300 years, maybe"?
For the record: I don't think that priests should be able to buy $50M jets or keep 40% of total land of x country tax free, but they should not be forced to sell buildings because property tax is too high.
Churches are routinely handed over to the state or to commercial entities in order to preserve them because church membership is in rapid decline and its very expensive to take care of the church building especially if it has "survived millennia".
The upkeep of a Cathedral is hella expensive, St.Paul's in London claims its building's upkeep cost is > £5.2M ('more than £10 per minute').
A building ownership tax seems sensible, but I'd be amazed if any Capitalist government considered it.
I'm not sure I understand your meaning. Are you referring to something different from property tax?
Then if we’re talking about the UK, it feels weird to argue about religious buildings ownership in a kingdom, where the Queen has a religious role.
One of the reasons Islamic extremism is so hard to combat is because Islam exists largely outside of the control of the state, as backyard mosques can basically preach anything regardless how extremist it is, often deliberately recruiting people out of organizations that try to integrate with the state and society at large. I assume this is similar to radical Evangelicalism in the US.
Parallel societies are bad, they're a breeding ground for extremism.
Islamic extremism in your country is not due to lack of state control of their mosques. It’s how you have treated generations of Islamic immigrants (Turks on work visas, no citizenships, open borders with lots of “refugees”, etc). Of course they will make parallel societies. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
You conveniently forget that the church has no qualms about controlling the state in the US
Have you been blind to politics in the past few years? From forcing intelligent design into schools to full assault against planned parenthood etc.
I thought you were talking about the USA as a whole, my mistake.
And actually extremism among Turks is absent for the very reason I outlined above. In Turkey there's a long tradition of either religious integration in the state in the Ottoman era which had a strong scholastic tradition, or laicism under Atatürk, so there was very little room for sectarianism.
And yes, a lot of extremism is present among refugees, but that just proves the point, where do refugees originate from? Countries with failing state authority.
The picture you paint of government control over religion sounds very authoritarian to me. As far as “parallel societies are bad”, what happened to “diversity is our strength”?
Religious practice is fine but withholding a secular education from children or ditching modern medicine, or attacking the rights of women or exercising corporal punishment isn't.
I don't see how having the ability to put a stop to it is authoritarian, at least not any more than religious extremism itself is. The alternative to government exercising control over religion is having religion exercise control over government. The problem doesn't go away.
Fair enough. That’s not what I thought you meant by “keeping religious orgs in line with state secular views” or whatever. Even still, you don’t need state control over religion to achieve those ends, and indeed in the US where the state is constitutionally prohibited from interfering with religion, these things aren’t problems (at least not to any reasonable interpretations).
Mega-churches might have money left over but by law they are supposed to spend their money as their nonprofit charter says or they could get audited by the State and fined or have their charter terminated.
https://images.cdn.circlesix.co/image/1/1366/0/uploads/posts...
Let's just say that not every church is the same as your Methodist church.
https://balkaninsight.com/2018/11/23/heavy-price-tag-oversha...
70% or more of that came from public funding, essentially tax payer money rerouted to build this monstrosity, something the country really can not afford.
And all of that for a pissing match about who has the tallest church.
People around the world have different value systems and tolerances. For me it's impossible to consider state-funded excesses of the church without drawing comparisons to the likes of Musk. As for their relative social benefit, that's another topic entirely..
> they are currently building a church to the tune of 100 million euros.
> 70% or more of that came from public funding, essentially tax payer money rerouted to build this monstrosity, something the country really can not afford.
In Tesla's case, $428m of public money contributed almost one third of all profits made by the company in a single /quarter/, at a time when the dollar's future as a reserve currency is being called into question due to panic spending to support a system on the brink of collapse.
The trick will likely qualify it for inclusion in the S&P 500, making it further eligible for more of that sweet public money over winter, as the current administration discusses that index's performance as an explicit target on an almost weekly basis.
The recent elections confirmed the conservative direction of the country, fueled along others by the catholic church.
The good thing is that religion is not compulsory anymore. There used to be a time where not bring part of the church meant beung a real outcast.
This included the communist rulers who were quick to chistianise their children because otherwise they wild have hell in the family.
That was acually not bad as the church balanced the state.
Now they are omnipotent, and this is also the reason more people can be outside of church - because church is not unanimously seen as a savior anymore. Quite the opposite in the ranks of 30-50 yo people.
Some are even willing to use credit cards to pay their tithes if they come up short.
> Those in favor of lower taxes have argued that individuals are more capable than the government of allocating money to important causes, including people in need of assistance. But the study found that was not true. Donations do not match government assistance, and without tax money, social services are not funded as robustly.
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/republicans-give-more-to-char...
Incredible value for money - 90% of the services provided by our local church are staffed by unpaid volunteers who go above and beyond.
As an example, I have someone in my extended family that works for one of the state governments for employment services, and from the stories they've told me about how the department has been slashed and burned and forced to work with a skeleton staff, I'm not surprised at all that when the pandemic hit that everyone was having a hell of a time signing up for unemployment or getting the money they're supposed to be getting, and desperately need right now, or even just reaching a live person to talk to.
And of course that just makes the department look badly run, in people's eyes, which makes the average citizen even more likely to allow more money to be cut from them, because they just assume it's well funded already and "they suck at their jobs, what are we even paying their salaries with our tax dollars for? They should be fired!"
Whereas churches have a bit of a shield from that, at least, especially from the GOP in the US, who aggressively and consistently fight against social programs and non-defense government services otherwise, but their voter-base tends to be very religious, so they have an incentive not to hurt churches in any way.
Being handed everything by a welfare state is de facto charity for the recipient. The biggest difference is that charity is morally superior because it's voluntary.
Besides, the US has a very large welfare state. I get a big kick out of people pretending the US doesn't have an epic scale, highly dysfunctional, poorly operated, welfare state, that doesn't spend trillions of dollars per year. I just can't figure out what they're spending $8.1 trillion on every year. Must be roads and military. Where'd all that magic trillions of dollars in stimulus spending come from? That laissez-faire Capitalist US system surely. Those free market $1,200 checks raining from the sky.
Without exception every welfare state - including the US, which has one of the most progressive tax systems - heavily relies on rich people to pay an extremely outsized share of taxes.
IME even the most progressive churches can do a lot of 'soft' damage to already hurting people. Secular services certainly have their own faults, but at least they don't have so many invisible strings attached.
Please also keep in mind that secular services compete for resources and mindshare against religious institutions. It becomes a self reinforcing argument on the right that we need to keep the latter because the former is so bad.
I used to be a Christian. There are a lot of bad sides of Christianity and that is why I left. But it does help many people and after studying Buddhism I understand how the right approach to Christianity can bring a lot of peace to believers:
Unconditional love. Many people grew up made to feel they had to earn their parents' love.
Letting go of control. You can't control everything in life. Whatever is going to happen is up to God now.
Forgiveness. When people ask for God's forgiveness, it helps them to forgive themselves.
Gratitude.
I think the root of the problem lies in the fact that God here is an abstract entity with whom the believer communicates but no such abstract entity exists for non-believers (duh!).
May be some form of general artificial intelligence can fulfil this role in the future?
Real people can fulfil this role too but they are probably not abstract enough. edit: And hence not "powerful" enough (to forgive, to protect etc.).
Just spit-balling here. Also not trying to offend anyone here.
I have a hard time believing AI will fulfil this role. For would it be optimized for gains here and now, or actions of sacrifice now that will be payed back fully in an everlasting life and that is built on faith? :-)
And I must admit that love is hard and I mess up a lot! But i try to do the same as is written here:
"Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."[Philippians 3.13-14]
EVERYONE is a sinner. That sin is then forgiven.
But God's whole purpose was to save sinners like me and you through Jesus Christ: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us". [1 John 1, 8-10 NKJV]
One interesting question is whether those "positive dogmas" have "staying power"--will they be around as the moral potency of religion fades from a culture (especially by decades and centuries)? Maybe an indicator would be a comparison of aggregate generosity between religious and a-religious people?
I wonder how many churches would be as “loving” if “Adam and Steve” walked in?
https://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/deja-vu-all-over...
There was a wonderful article I read ages ago and can no longer find on the history of communes in the US over the 20th century. Not one secular commune managed to perpetuate itself across generations without turning into something vastly less communal. Most religious communes failed too but the Amish and Hutterites are practically ethnic groups based on religion and there are lots of smaller groups.
In many muslim countries in the world there are plenty of places like this because alcohol just isn't a thing.
Every time we propose the government spend money on something we must remember where that money comes from and seriously consider if it's justified.
That's not to say we can't have differing opinions on where precisely to draw that line, I think debate on that is good and healthy, and it's important to strike a good balance between too much and too little social welfare. But it's also better to have a more efficient and effective solution than to have one that "feels" better.
I really wish people didn't do this. I agree with your post, but it's preemptively combative to make the first thing you say, "you're going to disagree with me." It makes you sound like you're trying to present yourself as an underdog in the face of a monolithic enemy.
Churches can be opposed to abortion or same sex marriage. At the same time care for the needy. However also sometimes be biased at only serving the needy that they think need to be served.
I think that’s the main issue here. If churches are non-profits, treat them like other non-profits.
I fail to see why.
All financial dealings of churches go unaudited. They should be subject to annual open public audit, at the least. I think they should be taxed as any other corporate entity. They frequently compete with normal corporations and should be given no preference. As it is they pay neither federal nor local taxes in most jurisdictions, if not all.
BTW I'm very conservative. My inclination would be to do what the British and the French did centuries ago - confiscate all the properties of the churches.
They are. There is no difference tax-wise for a non-profit and church.
To me, reporting makes sense. For an organisation as big as a church, employing a few accountants seems like value for money simply because then fraud will be deterred.
While both churches and non-profits don't pay tax, they are treated differently. Secular non-profits have to account for the money coming in and out of the organization, while churches don't have to account for the donations or expenses.
If you argued that religion was not an intrinsic social benefit then you might start saying that some of what they do is not non-profit work. That could get interesting.
I'm not from the US, so I 100% expect those things from churches already. These sound like completely reasonable demands I would have on any public institution.
https://ffrf.org/outreach/item/14005-churches-and-political-...
My local church, that drives 10,000s of nearby resident crazy by ringing it's bells, had 3 people attending last time I stuck my head in.
3.
People only use it for weddings, christenings and Christmas.
They're not been a part of the community for decades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_and_religion#/media/Fil...
See how the US is an outlier?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Japan
In the Western world, the concept of humanist, egalitarian democracy is more-or-less an extension of certain Christian ethical beliefs that preceded it, so again, this definition of 'not-religious' is itself pretty problematic.
There's a reason why during the Bush presidential candidacy a big news item was the push for a Constitutional amendment to exclude gay marriage. The Mormon church spent a great amount of money advertising in California with regards to how dangerous gay people are to kids.
People talk about "intolerance" of "cancelling", but cancelling is about the exercise of free relations by withdrawing. And then there's the force of law.
This might be the case of some church organizations (specifically those that make it a point to be politically active), but claiming that all churches do this, or even a majority of them, is just not accurate - guilt by association.
I grew up in Catholic schools, and almost every priest that taught us was incredibly kind and open to gays.
These priests are some of the nicest people you'd ever meet.
Church culture evolves but not always in the progressive direction. Propping up these ancient institutions just because they are old--and sometimes do good--comes at a high cost to marginalized groups.
But more generally, I think an angle to the whole question would be to apply either or both:
- treat religious organizations as any other non-profit, with no specific religious exemption. If they can’t continue doing the same in that legal framing they need to adapt.
- give all non-profit orgs a path to have the same advantages as religious organizations, so they can help the community in the same ways.
So is conference halls. So is Zoom for that matter.
Churches are also places where parents force their children to go against their wishes, where creepy priests make unwanted advances etc.
> also the ones doing most of the "heavy lifting" on any kind of charity activity
Any kind? Really? What about NGOs? Volunteering nurses? FLOSS communities? People 3D printing masks in maker spaces?
Here in the U.K., the National Health Service put out a call for volunteers to help and tens of thousands of people signed up, regardless of any church.
You don't need these for significant charitable activity to occur.
I am not saying that churches don't do good, just that they're not needed for charitable activity to occur and we need to determine whether the good that occurs because of churches outweighs the bad, (which btw often doesn't even come to light due to victims fearing retaliation).
The problem is that in the U.S., the state has given up on helping the poor, especially when compared to EU countries, and it is then up to private institutions to fill in some semblance of what should have already been there as nonnegotiable basis of a developed society.
I am not from the U.S., (but with a lot of fiends from there), and I can tell you that a lot of what churches do in the U.S. is so basic that it should not be their role to provide. It is often used as a metric of "success" for churches and private charity in general, but in reality all it shows is a failure of the wider society where things like medicare for all are still not a thing, even during a pandemic.
When there's a possibility of thousands of dollars that need to be paid for an ambulance ride, that is a systemic failure of the system no church can fix.
I am not religious myself, but I want to make it clear that I am not arguing churches do no good. They absolutely do. I just feel that the awful shit they do is often overlooked as soon as something positive can be said about them.
There are multiple sides to every story, even characters you wouldn't think much about based on the overall picture did good, (one particularly repulsive character of history did a lot for animal rights for example).
I also feel like other forms of charity are often diminished in their impact because they're less visible than church charity.
Let's take FLOSS for example; I come from a relatively poor upbringing, without access to good education or the internet for the longest time. I have cerebral palsy and that means any kind of physical work is pretty much a no go for me. What I did have was a couple of friends who gave me Mandrake Linux on 3 CDs back in the day with GCC preinstalled and a book on C.
Now I am able to support myself as a programmer and donate to FLOSS on a regular basis. Because FLOSS gave me hope, I also found the motivation to exercise really hard and to preserve some amount of mobility for myself, even into adulthood.
Without it, I'd most likely end up dependent on people I wanted nothing to do with and without any kind of dignity, demotivated and miserable. I cannot overstate the impact the free software community has on me and I feel like it did more for me than any church ever could.
Just to point out, being an active developer/maintainer/etc of widely used FLOSS programs often seems to involve that. ;)
i'm also not sure what this has to do with taxes.
> nor expecting you to sit through a sermon like the old days
Its because America has come a long way to instill the freedom in the minds of people and the church knows if they force too much people will not turn up. So they relax it for now but once people become enough religious, they will move the needle a little further until there are no independence left. Don't fall for the charity stuff.
https://galileounchained.com/2012/05/14/are-churches-more-li...
The church is in only interested in keeping its own institution alive. If you ask the majority of Christians - who overwhelmingly went for a candidate who does not display Christian values - it’s because he furthered their agenda.
The church has hidden and continues to hide child molestation by their leaders.
They are pushing to reopen during Covid putting their congregations in danger - who are statistically older.
Churches are also one of the most segregated parts of society.
They consistently oppose universal healthcare.
One survey showed that 22% of Christians still believe that interracial marriage is a sin.
Great production, acoustics, cameramen, and often to peddle and push the organizers products [2] (books, DVD's, etc)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjpWTsh07k0 [2] https://store.harvest.org/
"Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon"
Did you purposefully leave out the full sentence? I would argue it is/was a new phenomenon. Nevertheless, would like to hear why you think HN should be exempt from political discussion anyways? We see thought-provoking discussions here each day. This is one of the positive aspects of HN that I value that it allows you to be politically and socially aware of ideas to get you out of your role as an "engineer" or "hacker".
Fair point about being a new phenomenon.
Let's post about rent control while we're at it and really set off some flamewars.
"Censors have never been on the right side of history. If you support censorship, consider that you may be advocating evil."
If this was a sarcastic bio, then forgive me for misunderstanding.
You can be a free speech absolutist and still think it's a bad idea to shout fire in a theater. Being against censorship doesn't mean you welcome anyone into your home to shout whatever the heck they want.
Also, perhaps you should review them again:
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That destroys the curiosity this site exists for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitarium_Health_and_Wellbein...
More importantly: these religious buildings still call the police when there is a break in and call the fire service when there is a fire. They expect all of the benefits from paying taxes without actually doing so.
The important distinction between non-profits and churches in the US is that churches do not have to demonstrate that they aren’t a just a profit generating company (see Scientology, many evangelical churches) - they don’t have to provide any documentation at all.
I’m fine with churches being untaxed non-profits, as long as they actually demonstrate that.
That isn't true. Non-profits are not taxed either.
For centuries, the King and Pope had intermittently fought over control of it (a situation not unique to England, but repeated across mediaeval Europe). Henry VIII did not see himself as carrying out a state takeover of the Church, but simply as settling that traditional conflict between Pope and King decisively in his own favour.
In the USA, tax deductions to churches is giving the same treatment as a charity.
Most jurisdictions which inherited English common law, have maintained the classification of "advancement of religion" as a charitable end. To give just one example, look at how the IRS defines "charity" in the US [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charitable_trusts_in_English_l...
[2] https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-purpose...
No it's not. All non-profits are untaxed. If you are going to charge churches, then charge all non-profits.
Personally I think that's a bad policy.
https://www.thebalancesmb.com/are-there-advantages-to-being-...
"There are no direct legal benefits associated with being identified as an FBO."
I don't think religious institutions have to pay property taxes.
Ok, I looked it up: “states subsidize religions to the tune of about $26.2 billion per year by not requiring religious institutions to pay property taxes for property worth about $600 billion. This subsidy is of particular interest because property taxes pay for services such as firefighting and police, which religious institutions use the same as corporations and private citizens.”
No, non-profits do not have to pay property tax.
So by that measure states also subsidize non-profits. And your math does not take into account the amount of services religions provide residents.
If you went by the internet religions do nothing except take money, but if you visit the real world, religions are the backbone of social services in the US.
That really depends on the denomination.
Sure, there are pastors of evangelical megachurches flying around in private jets.
On the other hand, other religious groups often have quite poorly paid clergy. I remembering hearing about an Eastern Orthodox parish, where after paying for the building, utilities, etc, the parish didn't have any money left to pay the priest. So he is working a full-time secular job, his wife works part-time (as well as looking after the kids), and the priest does all his religious duties after work and on weekends. (The plan was to convert enough people to Eastern Orthodoxy that the parish could fund the priest's salary and he could quit his secular job; hasn't happened yet, who knows if it ever will.)
One of my former work colleagues was a Protestant minister. His church was too poor to pay him anything. He worked for Oracle during the week, and ran church services for free on the weekend.
A lot of religious denominations are struggling with ageing congregations and declining membership. Even if there is sometimes still a lot of money at headquarters, when you get to the periphery of shrinking local congregations things are often very frugal.
Do those people applauding this really want to applaud a policy that gives tax exemptions to specifically religious activities but denies them to activities that are less explicitly religious in character? It seems the opposite policy to what they actually want.
People doing charitable work probably shouldn't be paying taxes. People doing community work probably shouldn't be paying taxes. I'm even nervous about taxes on business since things like supermarkets are primarily involved with is getting food to people cheaply - discouraging that seems foolish. The basis of that taxation status shouldn't be linked to religious affiliation.
The main specific exemption I know of relates to fringe-benefits tax (FBT). Not all charities and non-profits get FBT exemptions or concessions, only some. Religious institutions fall into one of those categories that do get FBT relief, but so do other non-profits like hospitals, aged care facilities, health-related charities, charities targeting poverty/homelessness/etc. But a charity which promotes the advancement of arts and culture, for example, would not get any FBT relief, although it would be eligible for other tax exemptions due to charities and non-profits.
Also, there is at least one area in Australian tax law where religious groups are disadvantaged: deductible gift recipient (DGR) status. Donations to religious groups are not tax-deductible when used to fund their core religious functions, only when used to fund their programs to help the poor, etc. By contrast, there are various other categories of charities and non-profits for which all donations are deductible (e.g. Scouts; Girl Guides; public libraries, museums and art galleries; some environmental groups; etc).
While the treatment may still be preferential (it still has some unique tax exemptions), it at least sounds closer to fair. The specifics of the tax law of Montreal are probably unknown to most people here.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Souperism for a more blatant historical take.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax#Germany
" The church tax is only paid by members of the respective church. People who are not members of a church tax-collecting denomination do not have to pay it. Members of a religious community under public law may formally declare their wish to leave the community to state (not religious) authorities. The obligation to pay church taxes ends once such a declaration has been made. Some communities refuse to administer marriages and burials of (former) members who had declared to leave it. "
In many European countries, everyone (community member or not, believer or firm atheist) has to pay full taxes to pay for the churches/synagogues and mosques. Including the salary of priests. This in addition of them also not being taxed due to their special status.
Despite not living in a theocracy, many are forced to participate directly in a cult that might be of zero interest to them.
In a way there is the irony of atheists providing support for churches, but it's just one of the ways the democracy fails with majority rules (55% religious vote that non-religious people pay taxes for churches) and governments as immoral institutions that exist to rule over people, not to care about them.
Most churches are also located in some of the prime real estate of top tier cities and I always wondered how they were able to afford paying $1500+/Sq.M in a prime, central area.
About the charity work - I know for a fact the charity work the churches do cost less than 10% of the income they make, I got this number from a former church member who was a top level guy in his church. Given that churches are anyway structured like a business entity internally and manage money like a proper business, why shouldn't they be taxed as one?
It makes no sense to not tax them no matter how you try to justify it. If they did get an exemption, so should Mc Donald's for giving away a free Cola bottle with every $20 meal you get.
If you think Christianity is broadly good and correct, the trend towards business-like megachurches and celebrity pastors is deeply corrosive to the faith.
If you think Christianity is broadly bad and corrupt, the trend towards business-like megachurches and celebrity pastors entrenches and effectively promulgates many of the religious ideas that you abhor.
If we're fair to what it is being said, the point seems to be this: churches are like corporations: their goal is to grow in size and revenue.
That is demonstrated by the anecdata of a friend, someone high enough in a particular church, that confirms they only spent 10% of their income on charity.
So the gist seems to be this: if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like duck, it must be taxed like a duck.
Not a bad argument per se. However, it lacks supporting data, preaching for those who already feel that religious institutions are a scam anyway. So, because of that, it's not very persuasive.
If you really know this for a FACT, then I'm sure you can share your source for this information.
Churches are currently treated almost exactly like any other non-profit by the IRS. Taxing them specifically, but NOT other non-profits means we would be specifically discriminating against a religious organization.
...and religious persecution is a new level of left-wing intolerance that I, sadly, would not be surprised to see.
These are bold statements that need sources other than some guy you know.
I have seen crumbling Catholic churches, and I have seen the Vatican Meusum. Two extremes of wealth.
And so on...if we could turn the clock back and buy land on Manhattan or Las Vegas we'd be rich (on paper at least too)
- Fundamentalism and literalism is a fairly modern phenomenon which is mostly a Protestant reaction to the Enlightenment and the lionization of scientific, empirical knowledge over other forms of knowledge. Early Christian leaders didn't believe in literalism. In the Middle Ages, there was a fourfold method of interpreting scripture. And so on.
Church father Origen (184-253 CE), due to his familiarity with reading and interpreting Hellenistic literature, taught that some parts of the Bible ought to be interpreted non-literally. Concerning the Genesis account of creation, he wrote: "who is so silly as to believe that God ... planted a paradise eastward in Eden, and set in it a visible and palpable tree of life ... [and] anyone who tasted its fruit with his bodily teeth would gain life?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_literalism
- There have been near-infinite forms of Christianity (and every other religion) since their founding. To say that "Christianity is XYZ" is simply wrong. It has embodied entirely different values at different times and the Christianity of 2020 would be nearly incomprehensible to the Christian of 1600 or 1000 or 500. This is true even today.
- Many of what are considered "humanistic" or "secular" values are more-or-less directly traceable to the influence of Christianity. Universal value of human beings, that is, that everyone has fundamental dignity, rights, the ability to vote (democracy), and similar human rights concepts that have Western origins are almost direct extensions of Christian thought. In many ways, modern secular Western democratic society is post-Christian one, in the sense that it's a direct extension, not a radical departure.
- The concept of secularity has been redefined and come under attack in the past few decades. See writers like Charles Taylor, who have argued that secularity hasn't resulted in less religious beliefs, but merely their multiplication and changing of form. This falls in line with other social trends.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secular_Age
TLDR: It's complicated.
Those evil grifters, we need to clamp down.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/mormon-church-...
I suffered conversion therapy and could never get on hormone blockers young; because of the nonsense faith results in from people with authority over administering a medical treatment. As an adult I'm now trying every year to afford surgeries I cannot afford while my peers save for homes. Also parents disowned me and I have ptsd from the physical & mental abuse.
Nice to see religion coming to an end before my shorter life from it. Of course it will out last me but I'm hopeful; as the younger generation is aware of the countless injustice while malevolent people attempt to disguise religion as what the "community" needs.
The facade known as religion should rot to nothingness with all the people that forced it upon others.
edit: Yah religious patrons don't like it when victims of religion speak out. Similar you all don't ever remedy the victims of what you support exist in this cruel world because of people like you.