> Tax exemption should be a non-issue.
> 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.