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This is such an important point. 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 t

This is such an important point. 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.

jsmeaton 6y ago
Don't you only tax profits? If a church isn't making any, then there'd be nothing to tax?
- ajdlinux 6y ago
  I don't know about the US tax system, but at least in my experience here in Australia, not every expense incurred by a business or partially-taxed non-profit is necessarily deductible. For example, I formed a company with some friends for the purpose of work on a single contract, and the expenses we incurred in incorporating the company were only deductible at a rate of 20% per year over 5 years, so we ended up having to pay tax without being able to deduct most of that particular set of expenses during the 1 year we were in operation.
  - MaximumYComb 6y ago
    Thats for items which depreciate in value over a multi year period right? I know that you were only in business one year but the tax system isn't really designed around 1 job incorporated companies.
  - hestefisk 6y ago
    That’s depreciation on capitalised assets. Churches would like have very few assets that depreciate apart from buildings.
    - ajdlinux 6y ago
      Capital expenses, not depreciating assets. 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.
    - kshacker 6y ago
      One of the companies I used to work for - the joke was they are a land acquiring company under the guise of technology. They did tech too and made a lot of money, but they made decent sum from land too. Same may be going on for churches too.
- voisin 6y ago
  The tax being referred to in the case of churches is usually property taxes, which are based on property value, not profit or operations.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  It's not just about the amounts, but the time tax, and the effort tax. Maintaining tax records is not zero-effort.
  - thefounder 6y ago
    Why should the non-religious non profit organisations have to maintain tax recods then?
    - forgotmypw17 6y ago
      That is a great question!
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    It's not exactly high effort either. If a business can afford to build a megachurch and run TV campaigns to fill it, it shouldn't have a problem finding the time/money to file a fucking tax return. 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.
    - hunta2097 6y ago
      The Catholic church has also claimed over $1.4bn in PPP loans too. I would find that especially galling.
- onetimemanytime 6y ago
  >>Don't you only tax profits? If a church isn't making any, then there'd be nothing to tax? 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.
  - hrktb 6y ago
    A solution to this is to give back the land to the local city and have it handled as cultural heritage, with an authorization to practice religious activities at specific times, but it’s governed by local administration overall. That’s how some cathedrals are managed in europe for instance.
    - onetimemanytime 6y ago
      A better solution is to keep it as it is. It has survived millennia. It's their land and states can renege their promises.
      - madaxe_again 6y ago
        What has survived millennia “as it is”? The United States? It was founded scarcely three centuries ago. The Christian church? Ever hear of the reformation, of Calvin, of Protestantism? I.e. one of the main reasons the United States exists? 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?
        iso947 6y ago
        In the UK our local church is physically about 850 years old, But there was a church on the site back in 1086 and presumably before, as it was mentioned in the domesday book. It’s Anglican now, before then it was catholic, maybe it used to be a pagan worship site, maybe in future it will be for the cult of Cummings. 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.
- gscott 6y ago
  I have been on a budget committee for a Methodist church. There is no profit, no money left over the next year, the largest expense is the pastor who is an employee (50k per yr in this case). 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.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    I'll just leave this here as one sample of many: https://images.cdn.circlesix.co/image/1/1366/0/uploads/posts/2015/12/54bb3989949349de08541e1be80eb1af.jpg 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.
    - james412 6y ago
      What are we supposed to be looking at here?
      - jacquesm 6y ago
        Russian Orthodox priests in Romania and Bulgaria are absolutely terrible. They prey on a gullible and very poor population while living in opulence and flaunting their wealth. In Bucharest, Romania, they are currently building a church to the tune of 100 million euros. https://balkaninsight.com/2018/11/23/heavy-price-tag-overshadows-romanian-cathedral-s-ceremonial-opening-11-22-2018/ 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.
        james412 6y ago
        Meh.. I find it difficult to care too much on a site whose population regularly fawn over a billionaire who stands to make billions more, largely due to booking sale of taxpayer-funded carbon credits to his company's most recent quarterly earnings as profit. 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..
Galaxeblaffer 6y ago
Maybe you could earmark the collected taxes for creating secular alternatives? Or maybe create a system where people don't have to rely on churches and rich people for charity.
- moralestapia 6y ago
  >Or maybe create a system where people don't have to rely on churches and rich people for charity. Grow up, there is no utopia and whatever works already is better than nothing.
  - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
    Aside from being plain condescending or outright rude, you've shut down discussion about any approach that may be different. A better response would have been to ask them to suggest something, or show a case (another country, say) where this was already done.
  - lazyasciiart 6y ago
    Define "works".
  - Galaxeblaffer 6y ago
    Yeah, let's just give up on making the world a better place. We might never reach Utopia, but we can for damn sure get closer especially if we free ourselves from dogmatic thinking. Do you really want to settle for better than nothing?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - gscott 6y ago
      Communism is what you are looking for... where all people are putting in all of their effort to the common goodwill with government guiding the effort.
xbmcuser 6y ago
Well why is a countries system so broken that you need these churches to do charities.
- Tyrannosaur 6y ago
  Why is a country's moral system so broken that instead of charitable giving you take from people under threat of force instead?
  - LadyCailin 6y ago
    I think the fact that you consider taxes to be such a nightmare scenario shows that your moral system is broken. Society cannot exist without cooperation, and refusal to participate in society (at everyone’s expense) is an immoral position imo. We can certainly argue about the specifics of what that participation should look like (ie taxes and conscription and whatnot) but when your position is that the government should never ever be allowed to force you to do things, then we’re on completely different planets, and I think your moral code is flat out broken.
    - Tyrannosaur 6y ago
      Oh, worry not, I firmly believe that sometimes the government absolutely should take your money under threat of violence, but we should always remember that's exactly what taxes are. 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.
      - LadyCailin 6y ago
        Well, that's good, and in that case, I agree with you. However, I guess I'm also just much more pragmatic than you, because from a purely utilitarian perspective, the government running various "charity" programs is much more efficient than private charities running them. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/republicans-give-more-to-charity-than-democrats-but-theres-a-bigger-story-here/ https://nonprofitquarterly.org/republicans-give-more-to-char... The general attitude here in Europe also is a much more favorable outlook on taxes as well, and while it is true that people give less, overall, society is better, and people know and don't mind that their taxes are going to help those less fortunate. It's just that generally speaking, government run programs (when not being constantly tried to shut down) are able to provide an overall better service. 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.
happytoexplain 6y ago
>It's going to go against the grain at hackernews 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.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  What he's saying is true though, there is no reason to sweep it under the rug because it hurts a few feelings.
- dsd 6y ago
  I agree. I'm here because I like being part of a community where folks are balanced and measured and without outrage culture.
nojvek 6y ago
Should a non profit foodbank not get the same treatment as a church? 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.
giardini 6y ago
earthscienceman says>"It's going to go against the grain at hackernews, but taxing churches in the US is a terrible idea.< 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.

jsmeaton 6y ago

Don't you only tax profits? If a church isn't making any, then there'd be nothing to tax?

ajdlinux 6y ago
I don't know about the US tax system, but at least in my experience here in Australia, not every expense incurred by a business or partially-taxed non-profit is necessarily deductible. For example, I formed a company with some friends for the purpose of work on a single contract, and the expenses we incurred in incorporating the company were only deductible at a rate of 20% per year over 5 years, so we ended up having to pay tax without being able to deduct most of that particular set of expenses during the 1 year we were in operation.
- MaximumYComb 6y ago
  Thats for items which depreciate in value over a multi year period right? I know that you were only in business one year but the tax system isn't really designed around 1 job incorporated companies.
- hestefisk 6y ago
  That’s depreciation on capitalised assets. Churches would like have very few assets that depreciate apart from buildings.
  - ajdlinux 6y ago
    Capital expenses, not depreciating assets. 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.
  - kshacker 6y ago
    One of the companies I used to work for - the joke was they are a land acquiring company under the guise of technology. They did tech too and made a lot of money, but they made decent sum from land too. Same may be going on for churches too.
voisin 6y ago
The tax being referred to in the case of churches is usually property taxes, which are based on property value, not profit or operations.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
It's not just about the amounts, but the time tax, and the effort tax. Maintaining tax records is not zero-effort.
- thefounder 6y ago
  Why should the non-religious non profit organisations have to maintain tax recods then?
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    That is a great question!
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  It's not exactly high effort either. If a business can afford to build a megachurch and run TV campaigns to fill it, it shouldn't have a problem finding the time/money to file a fucking tax return. 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.
  - hunta2097 6y ago
    The Catholic church has also claimed over $1.4bn in PPP loans too. I would find that especially galling.
onetimemanytime 6y ago
>>Don't you only tax profits? If a church isn't making any, then there'd be nothing to tax? 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.
- hrktb 6y ago
  A solution to this is to give back the land to the local city and have it handled as cultural heritage, with an authorization to practice religious activities at specific times, but it’s governed by local administration overall. That’s how some cathedrals are managed in europe for instance.
  - onetimemanytime 6y ago
    A better solution is to keep it as it is. It has survived millennia. It's their land and states can renege their promises.
    - madaxe_again 6y ago
      What has survived millennia “as it is”? The United States? It was founded scarcely three centuries ago. The Christian church? Ever hear of the reformation, of Calvin, of Protestantism? I.e. one of the main reasons the United States exists? 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?
      - iso947 6y ago
        In the UK our local church is physically about 850 years old, But there was a church on the site back in 1086 and presumably before, as it was mentioned in the domesday book. It’s Anglican now, before then it was catholic, maybe it used to be a pagan worship site, maybe in future it will be for the cult of Cummings. 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.
gscott 6y ago
I have been on a budget committee for a Methodist church. There is no profit, no money left over the next year, the largest expense is the pastor who is an employee (50k per yr in this case). 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.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  I'll just leave this here as one sample of many: https://images.cdn.circlesix.co/image/1/1366/0/uploads/posts/2015/12/54bb3989949349de08541e1be80eb1af.jpg 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.
  - james412 6y ago
    What are we supposed to be looking at here?
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      Russian Orthodox priests in Romania and Bulgaria are absolutely terrible. They prey on a gullible and very poor population while living in opulence and flaunting their wealth. In Bucharest, Romania, they are currently building a church to the tune of 100 million euros. https://balkaninsight.com/2018/11/23/heavy-price-tag-overshadows-romanian-cathedral-s-ceremonial-opening-11-22-2018/ 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.
      - james412 6y ago
        Meh.. I find it difficult to care too much on a site whose population regularly fawn over a billionaire who stands to make billions more, largely due to booking sale of taxpayer-funded carbon credits to his company's most recent quarterly earnings as profit. 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..

Galaxeblaffer 6y ago

Maybe you could earmark the collected taxes for creating secular alternatives? Or maybe create a system where people don't have to rely on churches and rich people for charity.

moralestapia 6y ago
>Or maybe create a system where people don't have to rely on churches and rich people for charity. Grow up, there is no utopia and whatever works already is better than nothing.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  Aside from being plain condescending or outright rude, you've shut down discussion about any approach that may be different. A better response would have been to ask them to suggest something, or show a case (another country, say) where this was already done.
- lazyasciiart 6y ago
  Define "works".
- Galaxeblaffer 6y ago
  Yeah, let's just give up on making the world a better place. We might never reach Utopia, but we can for damn sure get closer especially if we free ourselves from dogmatic thinking. Do you really want to settle for better than nothing?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - gscott 6y ago
    Communism is what you are looking for... where all people are putting in all of their effort to the common goodwill with government guiding the effort.

xbmcuser 6y ago

Well why is a countries system so broken that you need these churches to do charities.

Tyrannosaur 6y ago
Why is a country's moral system so broken that instead of charitable giving you take from people under threat of force instead?
- LadyCailin 6y ago
  I think the fact that you consider taxes to be such a nightmare scenario shows that your moral system is broken. Society cannot exist without cooperation, and refusal to participate in society (at everyone’s expense) is an immoral position imo. We can certainly argue about the specifics of what that participation should look like (ie taxes and conscription and whatnot) but when your position is that the government should never ever be allowed to force you to do things, then we’re on completely different planets, and I think your moral code is flat out broken.
  - Tyrannosaur 6y ago
    Oh, worry not, I firmly believe that sometimes the government absolutely should take your money under threat of violence, but we should always remember that's exactly what taxes are. 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.
    - LadyCailin 6y ago
      Well, that's good, and in that case, I agree with you. However, I guess I'm also just much more pragmatic than you, because from a purely utilitarian perspective, the government running various "charity" programs is much more efficient than private charities running them. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/republicans-give-more-to-charity-than-democrats-but-theres-a-bigger-story-here/ https://nonprofitquarterly.org/republicans-give-more-to-char... The general attitude here in Europe also is a much more favorable outlook on taxes as well, and while it is true that people give less, overall, society is better, and people know and don't mind that their taxes are going to help those less fortunate. It's just that generally speaking, government run programs (when not being constantly tried to shut down) are able to provide an overall better service. 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.

happytoexplain 6y ago

>It's going to go against the grain at hackernews 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.

stjohnswarts 6y ago
What he's saying is true though, there is no reason to sweep it under the rug because it hurts a few feelings.
dsd 6y ago
I agree. I'm here because I like being part of a community where folks are balanced and measured and without outrage culture.

nojvek 6y ago

Should a non profit foodbank not get the same treatment as a church? 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.

giardini 6y ago

earthscienceman says>"It's going to go against the grain at hackernews, but taxing churches in the US is a terrible idea.< 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.