There Are Growing Calls to Finally Tax the Catholic Church | Hacker News Reader

There Are Growing Calls to Finally Tax the Catholic Church

vice.com

30 pointsDocFeind28 comments

Beware: if you tax an organization, at least in the US, it will insist on its Constitutional right to representation. They'll no longer be satisfied with working around the margins to influence policy, they'll insist on a seat at the table. The Catholic Church is big enough and has enough money to upend entire political systems. Is that really what you want?

But church and state are separate. So even if they usurp their rights it’ll get squashed by courts

By adding a tax, you are narrowing that separation. The original bargain was the state wouldn't recognize an official religion and religions would be tax exempt - a good enough attempt at keeping the institutions separate.

That is not the original bargain. The decision to not recognize a state religion was a part of US political policy from very early times. In 1797, the treaty of Tripoli stated "The Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." The decision to grant churches tax exemption comes much later and involves quite a bit of back and forth at the federal and state level. Though, to be fair, there has always been quite a bit of not-officially-ratified tax leniency on churches, even before federal laws were passed.

Sorry, yes this is correct in the sense that at the founding this wasn't the bargain per se but a result from the separation. It should be noted that what taxes the government could levy were also not determined entirely at the founding. As you have mentioned, the exemptions to religious institutions go back to colonial times, pre-constitution.

Besides that, I was under the impression that even today churches of any significant size tend to be registered as non-profit or charitable entities and qualify for tax exemptions on that basis, not merely because they're religious institutions.

Since taxes are not just for raising funds, but also for coercing/ encouraging certain behaviors, or even as penalties for not participating in certain behavior, then any tax on religious organizations is arguably the state imposing it's say on how the organization should/must operate.

This is problematic on its own, but becomes worse if the tax laws don't result in equal treatment. For instance, a rule that exempted collections on Sunday from taxes, but not any other day results in favoring some religions, even if the rule is applied equally to all.

And the extreme case is that the government could just tax all religious orgs out of business, leaving us with religious freedom, but not any churches to join.

> The original bargain was the state wouldn't recognize an official religion and religions would be tax exempt

No, it wasn't. Tax exemption of churches isn’t the result of a “bargain” between exempt churches and the state, and isn’t a premise for state neutrality toward religion (either in the US or, as is actually relevant to the article but surprisingly not what most comments focus on, Canada.)

Unlikely. Remember that "taxation without representation is tyranny" was a catchphrase from the Revolutionary War. As soon as they are taxed, they will have a right to representation.

Do their US congregants not have the same level of representation that all citizens living in a state have?

U.S. Churches tax exempt status is typically as a 501c3 non-profit and that strictly forbids direct political activity. Removing the 501c3 designation would mean that they no longer have a reason to refrain from direct political activity.

A Church does not specifically need to be a 501c3 organization to be tax exempt, but it makes things quite a bit easier for several reasons so most choose to go this route.

> U.S. Churches tax exempt status is typically as a 501c3 non-profit and that strictly forbids direct political activity.

No, it doesn't. It prohibits direct or indirect campaign activity (a prohibition which, in the case of Churches, is widely flouted and for which enforcement is near no existent), but allows a variety of notionally non-campaign political activity (which, also, is a fictitious distinction, and essentially all activity undertaken of this type is direct activity targeted at advancing particular candidates or parties electoral prospects, and tends to be particularly focussed around particular elections.)

> Removing the 501c3 designation would mean that they no longer have a reason to refrain from direct political activity.

Removing the 501(c)3 designation would mean that not only was the church so affected no longer tax exempt but donations to it would no longer be tax deductible, so it would need substantially more donated dollars, each of which would cost donors more (because of the lack of deductibility), just to be where it was status quo ante. So they'd have less money to spend on the political activity they already freely engage in.

> A Church does not specifically need to be a 501c3 organization to be tax exempt

It does for donations to be tax deductible; also, “churches” are an enumerated subtype of 501(c)3, but not of other tax exempt categories, so while being a church ipso facto qualified you for 501(c)3 status (and for exceptions to some rules applicable to other 501(c)3 orgs) if you are willing to abide by the subset of rules actually enforced on churches in that classification, it doesn't automatically qualify you for any other tax exempt status.

Of course, all this is irrelevant to the article which is about Canada, which has not yet become a region of the United States subject to the US tax code.

> Remember that "taxation without representation is tyranny" was a catchphrase from the Revolutionary War. As soon as they are taxed, they will have a right to representation.

No, they won’t.

One, because that wasn’t a catchphrase of Canada’s nonexistent Revolutionary War.

Two, because catchphrases aren’t legally binding.

And three, because the catchphrase involved referred to central government taxation of the population of a distinct local jurisdiction, whose citizenry had representation in the local, but not central, government. All the citizens affected already are fully represented in the central government of Canada.

So, the non-binding foreign catchphrase at issue wouldn't even suggest a representation gap in the case under discussion if the complaint it was making was treated as a binding rule applicable to the case, which it very much is not.

Let us suppose that representation is off the table. What about subsidies and support? We expect, regardless of nationality, to get something in exchange for payment of taxes. We fund government programs from which we benefit, but also those we may not directly benefit from or even support.

Does anyone expect that churches, once taxed, will not, through the work of their members, demand, and get, government funds? Are people who advocate taxing the Catholic church prepared to accept that, as a result, some tax money will find it's way into programs expressly created to benefit the church? If government money flows to support institutions the church opposes, it will almost certainly flow to the church itself. Is that political situation tolerable to those who advocate taxing churches?

> What about subsidies and support?

One of the reasons for the push is that Catholic institutions (particularly schools) already get subsidies and support.

> Does anyone expect that churches, once taxed, will not, through the work of their members, demand, and get, government funds?

They already do, through the work of their members and supporters. Making it more expensive to support churches at current levels before engaging in additional political activity won't increase their success at doing that.

Clearly I need to bow out of this conversation, because I'm speaking as someone living in the US familiar with US laws, and the discussion is taking a distinctly provincial turn. I'm not sure why discussing church-state relations only in terms of Canadian law is of much interest to HN, but I'll concede that I have nothing to contribute along those lines.

The point is that religious institutions like the Catholic Church, in exchange for their charity status are, at least in principle, supposed to be apolitical and not get involved in electoral politics. The Pope did not endorse Biden, for example.

Remove tax-free status and that's no longer required. You could have priests giving their parishioners strong 'advice' on how to vote for every name on the ballot. (Not that that doesn't happen to some degree already in practice...)

> You could have priests giving their parishioners strong 'advice' on how to vote for every name on the ballot. (Not that that doesn't happen to some degree already in practice...)

Tax them and the priests won't work around the margins any more, they'll straight up hand out partisan voter guides and send their parishioners to work on political campaigns in the church bus, using church funds. With Citizens United in play, the Catholic Church could funnel huge sums to candidates and issues of their choice, openly. Politicians friendly to church issues will stand in the pulpits and give stump speeches.

This is a good example of the line being skirted, with the Church (not sure if it came straight from the pope) saying not to vote on a single issue, but consider all issues.

Which in this case meant: it's ok with us if you don't vote pro-life. Wink wink.

> You could have priests giving their parishioners strong 'advice' on how to vote for every name on the ballot.

None of the Holy See, State of Vatican City, or Diocese of Rome are US 501(c)3 orgs, so I’m not sure why you think that the tax exemption rules applicable to US charities have any bearing on that decision.

The Pope had plenty of reasons not to endorse a particular candidate (the ones that are diplomatic and based in Catholic theological distinction between moral and prudential decisions and the role of the Church heirarchy in each being applicable across nations and particular elections.)

At the level of the Pope, the College of Cardinals, and the Roman Curia, the church is more like a sovereign state. They tend to follow the conventions of Westphalian sovereignty, and stay out of the business of other sovereign states.

People forget the separation of church and state goes both ways. A person can be unsatisfied with perceived meddling in state affairs by religious institutions but once you add a financial motive for them to get involved - yeah they'll want a seat at the table, at least to get favorable tax rates.

But the article is about Canada. Did you know that Alberta and Ontario publicly fund Catholic schools? I didn't. Seems unjust when they don't do the same for any other religion.

Also, there's all that context in there about the hundreds of unmarked graves found at former residential schools run by the Catholic Church. And that of the call to tax the church is to make restitution to the victims of those schools and their families.

> Beware: if you tax an organization, at least in the US, it will insist on its Constitutional right to representation.

First off, the first line of the article: “A mayor in Canada...” Canada isn’t the US.

Second of all, even in the US, organizations as such have no Constitutional right to representation.

Third of all, in both the US and Canada, citizen members, including citizen heirarchs, of the Catholic Church are already fully represented, taxing the Church just decreases the funds tbe people who support the Church have free for political activity, assuming they want the Church funded at the same level.

They are already on a long, steady decline in most developed countries due to their off-putting approach to politics. Raising their political profile would be unwise.

In any case, it's not as if they aren't political enough already.

You could use the same logic to argue against taxing corporations or billionaires. Turns out they already want to influence politics whether you tax them or not.

This article is divisive trash. It's Vice at it's worst, which is getting pretty much standard.

Will we tax Islam for their terrorist attacks? Who decides what the church is responsible for? Does the attacker have to be employed by the Mosque? Is it for recent events or old events or what Twitter votes for this week?

How do we deal with the different factions? Where do we stop spiting the Abrahamic religions?

What's a Religion? Flat earthing is a Religion. So is "Science is fucking awesome!" Is it just about how they legally register?

How about taxing all NGO's. They have as much accountability as the church. They have also had some big scandals.

But don't for a second think why the fuck the church was running schools and burying the dead. They must have pushed all the good people out of the way who also wanted to do that so they could indoctrinate children (and the dead homeless people in the graves, how does this fit with the indoctrinate theory)

Mass graves are not new, grow up, New Yorks Hart Island was Twitter cool last year but it's not new - https://time.com/5913151/hart-island-covid/ How about we fix that if this truly outrages people. The thing happening today.

Only if they tax all churches equally... including the Church of Scientology which has a history with the IRS.

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