dyslexia wrote:America's tax laws are designed to favor non-profit and charitable institutions which presumably benefit the community. The buildings of private schools and universities, for example, are exempt from property taxes. Donations to charities like the Red Cross are tax deductible. Organizations which engage in medical or scientific research can take advantage of favorable tax laws. Environmental groups can raise tax-free funds by selling books.
Churches, however, tend to benefit the most from the various tax exemptions available, in particular because they qualify for many of them automatically, whereas non-religious groups have to go through a more complicated application and approval process. Non-religious groups also have to be more accountable for where their money goes, while churches, in order to avoid possibly excessive entanglements between church and state, do not have to submit financial disclosure statements.
Tax benefits for religious organizations fall into three general categories: tax-free donations, tax-free land and tax-free commercial enterprises. The first two are much easier to defend and arguments against permitting them are much weaker. The latter, however, often creates problems.
Tax-free Donations: Donations to churches function just like the tax-free donations one might make to any non-profit organization or community group: whatever a person donates is subtracted from their total income before taxes are calculated. This is supposed to encourage people to give more and better support to such groups, which presumably are providing benefits to the community that the government now does not need to be responsible for.
Tax-Free Land: Exemptions from property taxes represent an even larger benefit to churches ?- there may be as much as $100 billion dollars in untaxed church property in the United States. This creates a problem, according to some, because the tax exemption amounts to a gift of money to the churches at the expense of tax payers. For every dollar which the government cannot collect on church property, it must make up for by collecting it from citizens; thus all citizens are forced to indirectly support churches, even those they do not belong to and may even oppose.
When it comes to operating 'tax free', churches are not even close to the biggest beneficiaries of this type of an arrangement.
Government owned and operated schools and colleges all receive their income 'tax free' as well as 'tax subsidized' and in many cases nearly all of their income is from taxes.
They own huge tracts of land and buildings which generate no tax revenue.
Very few churches are in the same league as these schools (which are in fact large businesses) when it comes to dodging taxes.
Churches also get regularly threatened with the loss of their tax exemption if a church employee dare speak his/her mind on a political subject.
Yet government school teachers, professors at government universities and administrators of such institutions are well known for their political activism and views. And they are public employees on the public payroll.
When was the last time you heard that a government school or college might lose their tax exemption for this reason?
Never, that's when.
