They should be treated as charitable organisations at best, and then also held to those standards. Any church run as a business should not be considered a church at all.
(Disclaimer: I'm a member of a Dutch church, and I have no idea what our tax situation is.)
If nothing else it would keep them from actually saying "You must vote for X" and diplaying electoral posters.
It could even happen that somebody high in a decision chain ends up claiming "we don't care they can do whatever they want" which could be a minor scalndal.
You can’t, because the IRS steadfastly refuses to pursue these violations. I’m an active lifetime member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation; and through our organization these near-constant occurrences of political endorsement by churches have been reported numerous times. To no avail.
To make matters worse, clergy in the U.S. often receive a large portion of their income as a housing allowance which is not taxable, as I understand it. But the majority of course still take their mortgage interest deduction. It’s a racket.
The question becomes: Are the umbrella organizations paying the ministers just the bare minimum to keep them on? So if the tax breaks are stopped, will the church organization cover the new difference, or lose the ministers?
It might still be a racket where the ministers are also getting screwed. The benefit of the tax breaks may not go to the minister who receives the tax break, but instead benefit the archdiocese/convention/council/conference/synod/assembly/convocation/etc who pays
(Some Protestant churches do have national structures, true, but you’re not often hearing about Lutherans doing things)
But even if everyone tollerates the authorities turning a blind eye to the issue many would not tollerate the autorities making it an official policy or slipping up and saying stuff like "a church could run for office for all I care".
The state is protecting churches in ways it should not; you likely cannot defeat this protection, but you can put pressure on the state so that it will be harder/riskier to keep doing it.[1]
[0] at a trend level, or at least for the well connected churches with armies of lawyers.
[1] I must warn that this is close to declaring a war (on a very small scale) and as such you could come out in a worse position than when you started.
I grew up in the south and have been in different churches for most of my life. Outside of supporting soldiers and an occasional American flag in church I’ve only seen a preacher get political once in my entire life. Even that was roundabout too.
Yep.
Anti-Trump Example #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtrxQyf4XrM
Anti-Trump Example #2 (church leader was correctly fired for this): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h098Z6g6pCE
Anti-Democrat Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1AlrvZr95k (Threatens to exile people who vote Democrat from the church)
Anti-Biden/Harris Example: https://www.newsweek.com/pastor-greg-locke-says-biden-demon-...
Pro-Trump/Pence Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d24BfefW8M
Local politics example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAcHN-dqpSc
I picked a variety for illustrative purposes. But there's a bit more to the stories: https://ffrf.org/news/news-releases/item/29320-ffrf-sues-tru... This type of "using the official church to endorse/condemn specific candidates and parties" happens all the time, and isn't limited to national politics.
From the size of a parking lot to whether a browser can be included in an OS. To express an opinion on such things is an act of political activism.
Abortion, gun contol, vim. Which one is not political? Which one is not a matter of religion?
I'm also open to discussions of a flat tax and abolishing food tax and lots of other tax ideas. Including allowing tax deductions for charitable giving and tax exemptions for lots of things. I'm ok with allowing some, but I see the room for abuse. We'll never eliminate all abuse and we'll never get everything exactly fair. But we can keep making tweaks in the never-ending pursuit.
The government setting itself up as "god" and interfering with religious liberty is a bit of a Rubicon.
I realize this doesn’t apply directly to taxation but we defer to religion in multiple ways in the law.
https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?re...
The ongoing societal cratering about us will only be hastened by levying taxes on them.
But perhaps that's the goal?
Religious institutions may be some kind of glue, but certainly not a moral one.
If you are funding a political campaign (not just any political speech, but an actual campaign) you have to be set up as a political campaign rather than a church.
> 1954, Congress approved an amendment by Sen. Lyndon Johnson to prohibit 501(c)(3) organizations, which includes charities and churches, from engaging in any political campaign activity. To the extent Congress has revisited the ban over the years, it has in fact strengthened the ban. The most recent change came in 1987 when Congress amended the language to clarify that the prohibition also applies to statements opposing candidates
https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/charities-churches-and-politics....
In practice, churches are given quite a bit of leeway to engage in what any reasonable person would call political campaigning.
The statement is correct there but it’s not a constitutional thing it’s an IRS thing.
You either misunderstand or misstated. The entire reason they are protected is because of their political speech. They aren't supposed to be actively endorsing, funding, or participating in campaigning for a politician. Most everything else is fair game.
MLK was a Baptist minister.
You are mixing up three things as if they are the same. Opinions are fine.
But no, churches cannot run political campaigns. They are exempt as a religious organization, and in the U.S., religious organizations, like charitable organizations, exempt from income tax cannot participate in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to a candidate for public office.
Martin Luther King, Jr., was an American citizen capable of supporting any candidate he liked. His church was not. His church was, however, as all churches are today, able to lobby. Lobbying is not campaigning. Also, they were and are able to speak out for or against executive actions of the government. Doing so is neither lobbying nor campaigning; office holders are neither legislators nor campaigners; they are actually in office.
The only thing that prevents them from doing that is that they are a 501(c)(3). The Johnson amendment requires they not be politically active.
However, if a church decides to register as a 501(c)(4) they absolutely can endorse or condemn candidates tax free.
So why aren't they 501(c)(4)s? 501(c)(3) allows you to deduct contributions to such and organization from your taxes. 4 only gives a break to the organization, not their donors.
The bill of rights is a list of restrictions on the state by very definition.
Tax-exempt charities are prohibited from using tax-exempt funds to engage in certain kinds of political speech. Those that do electioneer or conduct lobbying, for example, have separate non-tax-exempt branches that handle it, with their own funds and strict financial firewalls separating them from the rest of the organization.
Churches, on the other hand, get to flout those rules all the time. And I do mean churches; other religions don't tend to enjoy quite the same latitude.
And that selective enforcement by the government is a separation of church and state issue.
The state should reflect the ethics of the people. Religious morality is a type of speech.
This is immaterial but just in case anyone assumes anything: I'm not personally religious.
Some skirt that line very closely.
If we are talking about law, you are right - the US limits on religious groups getting involved in politics are in the tax code, not in the establishment clause. If they are willing to give up their taxation privileges, they are allowed to participate in politics as much as they like. And, since the tax code is just a statute, Congress could change it to allow them to meddle in politics without losing those tax privileges, and I doubt such a tax law change would be held to violate the establishment clause.
However, “separation of church and state” is also an extralegal principle. And, maybe, too much involvement of religions in politics violates that extralegal principle even when it doesn’t violate the letter of the law.
Then read OPs comment. compare the general, nonuniversal statement they made about political advocacy vis a vis tax status laws in the United States, to the judgements you envisioned of religious people and yourself and your religion.
Virtually every nonprofit is run nearly the same way as a regular business. They still make profits, the only differences are restrictions around distributing income to owners and some mild accountability in how funds are spent.
Donations and equity raises are not taxable income.
Yes, it would make attracting capital harder. It would also make it implausible to ever consider leaving that business and doing something else if you're one of the owners.
> Any church run as a business should not be considered a church at all.
Churches are always businesses. It takes a lot of money to own and operate large buildings, pay people to work for the church, and operate events for churchgoers. Eventually they need to accumulate funds to expand and build new churches. It’s a business, like it or not.
The issue is that some of these churches have taken the original intent of the business supporting the church and turned it into a questionable structure where it appears the church supports the business. Having millions of “customers” worldwide who are obligated to give you 10% of their income every year and to allocate years of their life to traveling the world and convincing other people to join is one lucrative business model.
We can’t really go out and tell people what their religion can or cannot do (within the bounds of the law) but we can, and should, set some limits on the tax breaks we give to these religion-businesses.
The easiest way is obviously to set some limits or thresholds. “Tax exempt up to $1 billion in funds” is hard to argue with and would easily solve this problem.
For limits and thresholds, I'd suggest "No property tax for congregation/worship space up to $X per Y members, no payroll taxes for 1 person involved in services or charity work per Z members".
Most churches don't have millions of members. Mine has about 200. It's part of a larger denomination, but membership is through the local congregation. I suppose religions should have some freedom in how to structure this sort of thing (not all have their leaders chosen by their members, for example, and some are more top-down organised), but I also think it's fair to have some restrictions on the more business-like organisations in order to prevent abuse. And if people really do want a big, monolithic, top-down business-like organisation, they can always just pay their taxes.
When colonists made it to the New World, who was there to educate the children? The Catholic missionaries and religious institutes founded schools and created whole districts to educate children (yes, even Native and Indigenous children such as we vilify them for in Canada.)
Parents would often have at least one child set aside to dedicate to the Church, as a priest and/or a professed religious. Children would enter the seminary, monastery, or convent. In return, those insitutions would care for the underprivileged and the powerless. Many monasteries provided services to the Church and to the general public: brewing beer, cultivating gardens, baking bread, you name it.
But as all these services and more are privatized and nationalized, it sort of makes the Church redundant, an NGO without purpose, if you're on the outside looking in. So why perpetuate non-profit status of these mere charities when the State can provide entitlements far beyond what meager donations can provide? It's definitely a Sophie's choice, when you get right down to it.
It’s not the states’ fault they choose not to.
[1] https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2022/05/24/the-finances-behi...
I'd expect a more diligently written article from an average ten year old.
I define "noticeable" as a measure of the Church's proportional amount of donations relative to its income or supposed amount of cash reserves.
At the same time, the Mormon Church spent 3.6 million dollars (6.7 million in today's dollars) in 2000 to lobby the state of California against LGBTQ protections. While that is clearly pennies (or less) for a fund that supposedly is over $100 billion, the point still stands.
If the Mormon Church stepped up during COVID, any Hurricane/Wildfire/Storm or similar times of need to the tune of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, and a lot of that went to non-members, the Church would be shouting it from the rooftops "look how charitable we are! we help non-tithing members! we help the outside community!" but that didn't happen, did it?
I'm not saying this is right or wrong. It even sounds a bit dated to me. But that's the underlying reason.
By targeting their assets?!
Just a matter of tailoring the law in the right way. For example, if you want to hurt church X which has a large following among urban population, just increase taxes on noncommercial private buildings with seating capacity over 50 in areas where population density is over some number. And make allowance for exceptions, so you can claim the law doesn't discriminate, and it's their fault that they didn't get exception.
The fact that exception is impossible to get if people asking for it adhere to some creed is secondary. Even if they get it, the process can be made costly and painful to the point where they run out of money before.
Or you can go explicit in your intentions, and make a law targeting that particular faith by name. It has been done in the past, it is happening now. Look at middle-east for examples.
And you can go for categories too. Say you don't want any foreign religions popping up. Just raise taxes on all, and give exceptions or such to faiths that have over some number of citizen adherents. The possibilities are practically limitless once you accept that law is a tool.
Can’t think of a great example here from a religious perspective.
But there’s an interesting new bill in Florida that cedes control of very specific railways to the Florida Department of Traffic which would only affect the Disney World monorail this is part of the Florida governors battle with Disney. You could probably find similar ways to target religious buildings, businesses and other activities.
https://www.wfla.com/news/politics/florida-senate-passes-tra...
I don't really see your point.
Interpretation can vary but thats not the same thing.
> For many Constitutional law scholars, last years' Dobbs decision on abortion rights at the Supreme Court came as a dismaying shock, because it showed conclusively that conlaw wasn't a realm of ideologically consistent intellectual foment, but rather, a matter of politics.
> Writing for Credit Slips, the finance law scholar Adam Levitin admits to feeling a bit of schadenfreude in that moment. The "blue collar" law scholars in "grubby" banking and money fields have always treated the conlaw set as "slightly clueless toffs"
Meanwhile in Belgium the government gives money to the Catholic church so it is able to survive.
It's honestly understandable in some of these countries, especially when you consider the deep interconnection many countries have with the church (take Rome as the quintessential example; how many of the tourist hotspots are just churches).
Happens all day long, just a little different and that is by allowing "story A" to be declared a religion, but "story B" not.
There are, of course different types of non-profit statuses but nothing special available to churches from a tax perspective.
As it stands any persistent form of power (corporate, religious, perhaps even academic) that seeks to further entrench itself will seek out forms of power such as a government or large multinational to ingratiate itself to.
Separation of state and anything else at all would probably have been the better doctrine to establish and follow, but oh well we’re screwed now
https://www.ncronline.org/news/germany-continues-payments-ch...
I assume there's still some standards for how those churches can use that money though; churches are not meant to be for-profit ventures. Though some of them (older ones especially) are quite rich. Younger churches tend to be poor.
The "church tax" is collected independently from that and it is a "paid" service the state offers to any public organization that falls into the same broad legal definition used for churches. As far as I understand the state actually makes a profit from the cut it keeps.
And since this is France, we of course have upped the game with a special region: Alsace Moselle.
Or is on the border with Germany and has been French or German in the last centuries as wars came and went.
Church there has a special status (taxes, payment of priests, religion at school, concordate with the Vatican, ...) that is historical and nobody ever got rid of it. There are also other specificities because of that, notably social security.
Would a person stop donating $1000 of their expendable wealth to their favorite cause (e.g., hunger, cancer, cloning hitler, whatever) if that $1000 donation no longer reduced their taxes by $200 (for example)? If so, what kind of person would do that? Probably not the kind of person who ever donates to anything in the first place.
Worst case, if there were no more tax-deductible charities: that person would pay the $200 taxes and only donate $800 (instead of $1000) to their favorite cause. Best case: Megawealthy would no longer leave $20 billion to their favorite cause (be that their dog, the LDS church, their love of oil drilling, or whatever), but would pay $5 in estate taxes and only have $15 billion leftover for their love of oil drilling (or whatever be their whim).
If a 503B puts its money into Microsoft stock, the profits that Microsoft makes are taxed. The capital gains the 503B gets wouldn’t get taxed when the stock was sold.
The main argument in the article, not fully stated, is that the Mormon Church doesn’t do enough beneficial works to qualify as a 503b. In the US, Churches are granted 503b status without specific reviews of their societal benefit. If you want to pay someone to operate a homeless shelter or ding a bell all day to prevent the end of times, it is all the same. This is part of separation of church and state as laid out in the constitution. If there was a specific review the State could “put its thumb” on the scales and favor some churches over others in granting non-profit status.
Churches, just like the local soccer club don’t have the same distribution requirements that a donor controlled 503b would have. For example if you are a billionaire and donate $1B of your appreciated stock to your donor directed fund you need to distribute 5% per year on charitable works to keep the 503b status. The article implies that the same requirement should apply to the Mormon Church that applies to a donor directed fund. This line of reasoning is incorrect.
A donor directed fund has substantially no other affiliated activity that has to be considered. This is more like Harvard’s endowment where there is a school controls the fund. In the case of Harvard, if the fund didn’t distribute anything in a year there still would be substantial educational work and research going on. In the case of a donor directed non-profit nothing would be happening. The Mormon Church argues that it operates more like Harvard and that the whistleblower did not have access to the larger organizations finances.
All global churches right now are facing a demographic cliff as wealthy nations are increasingly secular while most religions growth is in developing countries. In most cases Churches transfer a large amount of donations from wealthy countries like the US to less wealthy ones like Nigeria. In another 50 years many of those transfers will cease to be significant unless there is a religious revival in wealthier markets or a significant deviation in the number of children religious families have relative to the overall population in these countries. It is likely that many churches will need to wind down financial activities to be more aligned with the demographics.
This is the dirty little secret of billionaires' private foundations. That 5% has a lot of latitude and little oversight. For example, it includes administrative costs. A private foundation can pay each family member a salary (allowance) and that's a valid cost against the 5%.
As for the Mormon church (or any church for that matter) non-profits aren't meant to be politically active, as in campaigning for a particular party of candidate. We all know this happens all the time..
I'd be fine with keeping tax-deductability for contributions to complying non-profits. But why do they get to enjoy tax free status on, say, investment gains? Or income from investments (including property they own)? Get rid of that and I think a lot of problems go away.
Here's an example of a 503(c)(3) organisation (in politics often referred to as "dark money" organisations due to their lack of need to report the identities of individual donors) putting a family member on the payroll:
https://vtdigger.org/2018/07/29/sanders-institute-little-sho...
There's also the "buy from myself" tactic which possibly isn't that important for the Mormon Church but can certainly be used to boost apparent popularity or to change the format of money:
https://www.greenmountaindaily.com/2019/04/25/bernies-own-bo...
The same can be said for most charitable organizations. The community food pantry being taxed if it moves across town or simply trying to keep the rainy day fund even with inflation.
If a person is of the view that all good things come from the government then taxing charities makes a lot of sense. If, on the other hand a person believes that all good things originate from the people and that the government is just one of those good things it makes sense to allow room for other things that serve the people’s interests but don’t directly serve the governments interests.
I am certainly not saying that bad things don’t come from religious organizations, charities or the government. I am saying there is a belief in the US that power ultimately resides with the people. Actually with the people, not the government or through the government as representatives of the people.