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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 citie

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.
tim333 6y ago
You could have tax exemptions for hospital and universities.
Gustomaximus 6y ago
But would it be a disaster. For a 'church' hospital, the money they take in then goes to fund the hospital. Largely expenses meet income so there is very little tax to pay assume they dont pay sales tax on medical good like many countries. The churches that will pay high taxes are the ones that have the income but dont spend it and put it into investments to build their wealth. So in this way, I think taxing churches and also charities makes sense. There will be some fringe cases but largely those that do things with their funds will not be effected and those that hoard funds or use it to circumvent taxes will be the ones paying.

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.

tim333 6y ago

You could have tax exemptions for hospital and universities.

Gustomaximus 6y ago

But would it be a disaster. For a 'church' hospital, the money they take in then goes to fund the hospital. Largely expenses meet income so there is very little tax to pay assume they dont pay sales tax on medical good like many countries. The churches that will pay high taxes are the ones that have the income but dont spend it and put it into investments to build their wealth. So in this way, I think taxing churches and also charities makes sense. There will be some fringe cases but largely those that do things with their funds will not be effected and those that hoard funds or use it to circumvent taxes will be the ones paying.