10 ms·

Now let's tax churches, like Frank Zappa suggested :)

CountDrewku 6y ago
Ehhh Christian churches are some of the largest charitable donators in the world. Unless those taxes are going to the same places to help people I'd vote no. The government isn't going to spend it on things that help people and we know that.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- saddestcatever 6y ago
  Wouldn't it be similar to corporate tax? Tax profits, so that any existing donations would be tax deductible?
  - sithlord 6y ago
    Unsure exactly what you mean, church costs - donations = taxable "profits"? Not sure I really agree with taxing donations - I do think that it would cut down on how much churches bring in (as in people would be less likely to donate), and are able to distribute as a commenter above said. Now, I do believe that all other related income should be taxed by churches, whereas I think only "unrelated" income is taxable now. So for example: Church makes original christian music and makes income from spotify (or other sources) Church records their services and puts them on youtube (and monitizes them) Church rents out building for weddings or other events. etc (some of these may or may not be currently taxable, I am not an expert but my quick search seems to think they may not be)
    - ben7799 6y ago
      The churches can say they have no profits, but there's a lot of money getting spent on dubious things that a typical non-profit doesn't have. So you can tax the golden altars they build, or the private jets the pastors fly around on, or the castles the leaders live in. There's a huge sham in all this.
      - CountDrewku 6y ago
        Let's not pretend non-profits don't fall victim to the same bs. All you need to do is look at the Susan G. Komen foundation. People willingly donate to these places so if they don't care about it why should we?
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    If we started taxing churches, what would kill them would be the property taxes. Some churches are sitting on immensely valuable property. In my opinion we shouldn't be taxing church graveyards, we should give the buildings an exemption if they use the buildings for non-denominational community events like so many churches do, and we should definitely be taxing their paved parking lots.
  - CountDrewku 6y ago
    Why? What do we need that money for? If you don't like it then just don't go to church and the problem is solved. Obviously less people are attending so it sounds like it'll just solve itself in the future. No one is making anyone attend church and give offerings. It's just letting the government double dip on taxes at that point. Everything given to a church is essentially a donation to begin with and you want to have it taxed a second time after the church gets it? It's a waste of time to tax them and it's not going to be used for anything helpful in this country. After seeing where the US government is blowing our tax money on these supposed "stimulus" bills I can't understand why anyone would support taxing more things in this country.
    - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
      > It's a waste of time to tax them and it's not going to be used for anything helpful in this country If this is the best argument for not taxing churches, then I switch positions and say tax them and reduce my taxes. (But do it properly, which likely requires some Constitutional hand wringing.)
      - CountDrewku 6y ago
        That'll never happen and you know it. It'll be tax the church and your taxes will continue to rise. It's just as silly as the idea that taxing the rich more will reduce your tax. How about you just leave the churches alone and admit you're being biased because you dislike religion? The burden is on you to prove we need that tax money for something since you're proposing a change to something that's been in place since the US's inception and is a main tenet of the constitution. And there's also the MAIN reason which is the fact that it's expressly against the 1st amendment since it would give the government the free reign to tax any religion it dislikes out of existence and break church/state separation.
- Applejinx 6y ago
  Who is 'we'? Sounds like you are a strongly political church advocate making a political argument. I don't grant you the unilateral right to decide what places 'help people': that is a political question, and I didn't vote for you. You may not be particularly representative. In fact, according to the OP, you're not a majority here, so your attitude is not democratic, though it is still political.
  - CountDrewku 6y ago
    You live in this country and church taxation is expressly forbidden by the 1st amendment for obvious reasons. I also do not attend church so that argument is moot and you can stop trying to attack me on that basis. Being a majority on an internet forum is obviously not representative of the entirety of the US and is a pretty silly argument for changing an amendment, as is assuming that because people don't attend church they want it taxed. Maybe you should take some time actually understanding the constitution instead of dedicating your time to inane internet attacks? Pro tip - stop trying to control things you dislike, it's extremely anti-progressive and reeks of the same sort of intolerance ultra conservative religious groups display. Ironic eh? Lastly, this country is not a 100% democracy and it's a Republic for a reason. That reason is so that the minority get a say in what happens and don't get stomped out. This is a good thing and you'll realize it when you're not in the majority at some point.
speeder 6y ago
I am from Brazil... To be honest this would be a complete disaster here. 1. My city main hospital, belongs to Catholic Church, same applies to many other cities. 2. Many of our leading universities, doing research and important work, belong to Catholic Church, notably PUC-RIO, the creators of Lua language. 3. Protestant churches here are the major organizations driving away drug dealers, some took the donations to build better light system in public parks, provide free food, counseling, and so on. 4. We have an hospital considered one of the best of world for certain treatments, to the point people from first world countries sometimes come here for this hospital, and it belongs to a Jewish organization. And the list goes and goes on... a lot of public infrastructure here belongs to religious organizations, if the government taxed them the result would be the government suddenly needing to spend a ton of their own money replacing what these organizations are doing, and I doubt it would work well, for example the government-owned hospital in my city killed people more than once for stupid reasons (including giving penicilin to a guy that warned them he was allergic!), so the population rely on the catholic hospital instead. EDIT: reading a sibling comment made me remember another important one: the religious organizations here are major drivers for cultural education, for example our public-owned orchestras are often filled with church-trained people, ditto for audio engineering, theather and many other "art"-related professions.
- ncphil 6y ago
  Here in the US many major church organizations, including the Roman Catholic Church and mainline protestant groups (Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran) used to invest seriously in the same kinds of things. I think they lost a lot of credibility to the extent that their conduct of those "public interest" activities were indistinguishable from their private sector competitors (e.g. in recovery of medical debt). Withdrawing from these activities (for whatever reason) only compounded that problem.
- Applejinx 6y ago
  Bear in mind that the OP says US (not Brazil). I can't speak to conditions in Brazil, and don't intend to cast aspersions. When I say 'let's', the 'us' is Americans, specifically United States. Our experience isn't entirely the same as yours.
- 6y ago
FooBarBizBazz 6y ago
Given that corporations, which are taxed, have adopted totalizing ideologies that demand you "bring your whole self to work" and attend group therapy sessions, and that they are now ostentatiously "values-driven", I can see a point in not distinguishing between them and religions. Pretty soon they'll have us singing hymns and attending confession. I'd hate if, when they finally go all in on that, they get taxed less.

Ehhh Christian churches are some of the largest charitable donators in the world. Unless those taxes are going to the same places to help people I'd vote no. The government isn't going to spend it on things that help people and we know that.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
saddestcatever 6y ago
Wouldn't it be similar to corporate tax? Tax profits, so that any existing donations would be tax deductible?
- sithlord 6y ago
  Unsure exactly what you mean, church costs - donations = taxable "profits"? Not sure I really agree with taxing donations - I do think that it would cut down on how much churches bring in (as in people would be less likely to donate), and are able to distribute as a commenter above said. Now, I do believe that all other related income should be taxed by churches, whereas I think only "unrelated" income is taxable now. So for example: Church makes original christian music and makes income from spotify (or other sources) Church records their services and puts them on youtube (and monitizes them) Church rents out building for weddings or other events. etc (some of these may or may not be currently taxable, I am not an expert but my quick search seems to think they may not be)
  - ben7799 6y ago
    The churches can say they have no profits, but there's a lot of money getting spent on dubious things that a typical non-profit doesn't have. So you can tax the golden altars they build, or the private jets the pastors fly around on, or the castles the leaders live in. There's a huge sham in all this.
    - CountDrewku 6y ago
      Let's not pretend non-profits don't fall victim to the same bs. All you need to do is look at the Susan G. Komen foundation. People willingly donate to these places so if they don't care about it why should we?
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  If we started taxing churches, what would kill them would be the property taxes. Some churches are sitting on immensely valuable property. In my opinion we shouldn't be taxing church graveyards, we should give the buildings an exemption if they use the buildings for non-denominational community events like so many churches do, and we should definitely be taxing their paved parking lots.
- CountDrewku 6y ago
  Why? What do we need that money for? If you don't like it then just don't go to church and the problem is solved. Obviously less people are attending so it sounds like it'll just solve itself in the future. No one is making anyone attend church and give offerings. It's just letting the government double dip on taxes at that point. Everything given to a church is essentially a donation to begin with and you want to have it taxed a second time after the church gets it? It's a waste of time to tax them and it's not going to be used for anything helpful in this country. After seeing where the US government is blowing our tax money on these supposed "stimulus" bills I can't understand why anyone would support taxing more things in this country.
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > It's a waste of time to tax them and it's not going to be used for anything helpful in this country If this is the best argument for not taxing churches, then I switch positions and say tax them and reduce my taxes. (But do it properly, which likely requires some Constitutional hand wringing.)
    - CountDrewku 6y ago
      That'll never happen and you know it. It'll be tax the church and your taxes will continue to rise. It's just as silly as the idea that taxing the rich more will reduce your tax. How about you just leave the churches alone and admit you're being biased because you dislike religion? The burden is on you to prove we need that tax money for something since you're proposing a change to something that's been in place since the US's inception and is a main tenet of the constitution. And there's also the MAIN reason which is the fact that it's expressly against the 1st amendment since it would give the government the free reign to tax any religion it dislikes out of existence and break church/state separation.
Applejinx 6y ago
Who is 'we'? Sounds like you are a strongly political church advocate making a political argument. I don't grant you the unilateral right to decide what places 'help people': that is a political question, and I didn't vote for you. You may not be particularly representative. In fact, according to the OP, you're not a majority here, so your attitude is not democratic, though it is still political.
- CountDrewku 6y ago
  You live in this country and church taxation is expressly forbidden by the 1st amendment for obvious reasons. I also do not attend church so that argument is moot and you can stop trying to attack me on that basis. Being a majority on an internet forum is obviously not representative of the entirety of the US and is a pretty silly argument for changing an amendment, as is assuming that because people don't attend church they want it taxed. Maybe you should take some time actually understanding the constitution instead of dedicating your time to inane internet attacks? Pro tip - stop trying to control things you dislike, it's extremely anti-progressive and reeks of the same sort of intolerance ultra conservative religious groups display. Ironic eh? Lastly, this country is not a 100% democracy and it's a Republic for a reason. That reason is so that the minority get a say in what happens and don't get stomped out. This is a good thing and you'll realize it when you're not in the majority at some point.

speeder 6y ago

I am from Brazil... To be honest this would be a complete disaster here. 1. My city main hospital, belongs to Catholic Church, same applies to many other cities. 2. Many of our leading universities, doing research and important work, belong to Catholic Church, notably PUC-RIO, the creators of Lua language. 3. Protestant churches here are the major organizations driving away drug dealers, some took the donations to build better light system in public parks, provide free food, counseling, and so on. 4. We have an hospital considered one of the best of world for certain treatments, to the point people from first world countries sometimes come here for this hospital, and it belongs to a Jewish organization. And the list goes and goes on... a lot of public infrastructure here belongs to religious organizations, if the government taxed them the result would be the government suddenly needing to spend a ton of their own money replacing what these organizations are doing, and I doubt it would work well, for example the government-owned hospital in my city killed people more than once for stupid reasons (including giving penicilin to a guy that warned them he was allergic!), so the population rely on the catholic hospital instead. EDIT: reading a sibling comment made me remember another important one: the religious organizations here are major drivers for cultural education, for example our public-owned orchestras are often filled with church-trained people, ditto for audio engineering, theather and many other "art"-related professions.

ncphil 6y ago
Here in the US many major church organizations, including the Roman Catholic Church and mainline protestant groups (Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran) used to invest seriously in the same kinds of things. I think they lost a lot of credibility to the extent that their conduct of those "public interest" activities were indistinguishable from their private sector competitors (e.g. in recovery of medical debt). Withdrawing from these activities (for whatever reason) only compounded that problem.
Applejinx 6y ago
Bear in mind that the OP says US (not Brazil). I can't speak to conditions in Brazil, and don't intend to cast aspersions. When I say 'let's', the 'us' is Americans, specifically United States. Our experience isn't entirely the same as yours.
6y ago

FooBarBizBazz 6y ago

Given that corporations, which are taxed, have adopted totalizing ideologies that demand you "bring your whole self to work" and attend group therapy sessions, and that they are now ostentatiously "values-driven", I can see a point in not distinguishing between them and religions. Pretty soon they'll have us singing hymns and attending confession. I'd hate if, when they finally go all in on that, they get taxed less.