7 ms·

Unlike other nonprofits, religious organizations don't have to fully disclose all financial information to the IRS lol. What is the logic behind this? Why make

by akudha 3y ago

Unlike other nonprofits, religious organizations don't have to fully disclose all financial information to the IRS lol. What is the logic behind this? Why makes religious organizations special?

b112 3y ago
lol. What is the logic behind this? Why makes religious organizations special? The response to this is literally thousands of pages long. However, even reading recent, modern western/europeans history in depth (last 200 years), will give you more insight here. As for "why is it still this way?", you would quite literally have to rip rights out of nations constitutions, re-assess endless past case history, get people to vote on it, and on and on. There is literally no larger change you could pick, than changing the legal roles of church and state.
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  "The first clause in the Bill of Rights states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”"
  - b112 3y ago
    Unless you are agreeing with me, I will suspect that you don't get the point of this part of the amendment. It's about hands off. Understand, the church (legally) predates, and is not controlled by the state in western legal case history and laws. The church came first, not state. Again, just describing how we got here.
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      I am not an american, but I understand it as a clear intended separation of state and church. So also no privileges especially for churches.
      - fsckboy 3y ago
        no government interference in people's private religious choices or life, so that has been interpreted as no taxation of churches. But churches can't commit ritual murder or anything.
    - pjc50 3y ago
      > the church (legally) predates, and is not controlled by the state in western legal case history and laws. Henry VIII would like a word.
      - b112 3y ago
        He became the head of both church and state, they were still separate.
        pjc50 3y ago
        No they weren't! That's what the Americans were rebelling against and specifically wrote the church-state separation to prevent. The result was both Crown control over the appointment of bishops, bishops having temporal legislative power in the House of Lords, and (relevant to this story) the seizure and in some cases destruction of basically all Church property. The UK then spent hundreds more years fighting over this relationship. People are still writing angry articles about the monarch being inextricably linked to the church in 2011: https://www.businessinsider.com/why-its-absurd-for-britain-to-allow-catholics-to-marry-the-monarch-2011-11?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/why-its-absurd-for-britain-t... The Church of England is a state religion. It is part of the state (Crown), controlled by the state (King), and until the 19th century participation in it was effectively mandatory to participate in public life. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_Acts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_Acts)
    - mattbrewsbytes 3y ago
      Technically the religious organization in question came after the US was formed and had 23 states.
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    "establishment" means declaring a religion as being "the" state religion, as the Church of England is (or at least was) for the UK, or the Orthodox Church in eastern European kingdoms. it's not about, for example, a charter for a new religion you'd like to found.
  - solatic 3y ago
    "... or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Taxation, and subsequent compliance costs, serve as restrictions on such exercise.
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      So does the prohibition of ritual murder. (Some of the more extreme Asatru for example do feel limited.) When there are rules for everzone and only some organisations are excempt on religious grounds - then those religious organisation have an advantage over every not privileged organisation, making them effectivly state supported. Which I think should be indeed forbidden. So the state can and should continue to support all kinds of social organisations. But on an equal and fair base.
      - wanttocomment 3y ago
        Yes, the founding fathers had in mind a plurality of European religion, not every possible belief around the world from Africa to the Amazon. The idea you could create one government that could accommodate all those is the ridiculous contradiction. They would laugh at the suggestion there should be some equality of human sacrifice and communion.
        tomrod 3y ago
        It's cool. They were sloppy in their wording and their philosophy. We have almost 250 years of lived experience now, we can revisit the notion and not let it be a golden cow. It's going to be hard to wade through the myths and hagiographies, but we'll come out a better society on the other end.
        wanttocomment 3y ago
        Do you think it is possible to accommodate all those religions in one government? I agree with you that it's not a golden cow, but I typically have to question posts like this one to get that admission. Claiming authority from the constitution when you don't believe in it is a cheap rhetorical technique to appear interested in historical America when you aren't. The main conclusion I would draw is that we have no obligation of "fairness or equality" towards every religion. Our system was built to accomodate certain kinds and those that aren't in direct conflict, it seems a pretty good compromise that's hard to work around.
- b112 3y ago
  While I typically do not respond to downvotes, this is one time I should, because downvoting someone for expressing reality, shooting the messenger, is not reasonable. This is not a case of "omg that guy supports the church!". This is a case of nation's founding documents, thousands of years of case law, court case after court case. Even if every single (for example) American supported a change in the legal staus of churches/religions, it would take decades, for all state govenments, federal government, and hundreds of new pieces of legislation to be passed, to even get close to changing this status. And that's with everyone on board. And the same is true of the entire west.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    > the same is true of the entire west. The status of churches (and especially what counts as a valid "church" or "religion", especially non-Christian ones!) varies across the Western world. There is no one approach.
  - defrost 3y ago
    > And the same is true of the entire west. Yeah .. Nah. Religions aren't generally exempt from taxation or immune to prosecution in Australia. Those parts of a religions income that are used for charity can be exempt from taxation if the proper paperwork is filed and continues to operate in a transparent manner subject to audits, etc > To access income tax exemption, a registered religious institution must be a registered charity and endorsed by us as exempt from income tax. [1] Mind you Australia also recently and famously jailed a tier two 2iC Vatican official Cardinal George Pell so hardly a friend of the Church .. but a country generally agreed to be part of "the West" | "Global North" etc. [1] https://www.ato.gov.au/Non-profit/Getting-started/In-detail/Types-of-charities/Tax-concessions-for-ACNC-registered-religious-institutions/ https://www.ato.gov.au/Non-profit/Getting-started/In-detail/...
- akudha 3y ago
  Every dollar made by every person and organization needs to be accounted for, to the government. Unless you’re a mega church? I don’t understand why asking religious organizations to report their financial activities (especially the massive orgs that have the resources to do so, unlike teeny tiny 10 member churches) would be such a big deal. But hey, I am no constitutional or government scholar. I am just a dude sick and tired of a rigged system, what do I know?
  - boeingUH60 3y ago
    Has more to do with the country. In some European countries, all churches are required to report their income to the government.
- saiya-jin 3y ago
  > There is literally no larger change you could pick, than changing the legal roles of church and state. Sounds like yesterday was too late then. The little good that comes from church is even these days overshadowed by how much they fuck with politics literally everywhere around the globe (= distorting elections in their favor, which means less progress/reversals and less human rights at minimum, and usually they go much further). Also their moral compass is constantly fucked up, they still are covering homosexual pedophilia on truly gigantic scale, as they were so desperately doing last 100 years. Also, does church helps all people equally including other religions, unlike lets say "mother" Teresa who, apart from stealing millions $$ in donations was by many accounts very selective to whom to provide care, based on their religion and generally favored sick to suffer as much as possible, for some properly fucked up "christian" reasons. Some saint she was... Lets face it, religions almost unanonymously lost god/God and the original simple ideas. I look at history, since talk is very cheap but 2000 years of walking the talk has actually some weight, I mean all the weight you ever need to make an opinion. In Christianity's case its properly trivial - you have literal 10 rules and thats it, the rest are fantasies of semi-lucid humans from bronze age or right after, that would often end up in insane asylums these days. How much mental gymnastics believers have to do daily to stick with all that bureaucratic/managerial/political/financial stuff and feel righteous and above everybody else is astounding. Also tiny fact - only 1/3rd of the world is christian. So maybe 110 billions of human souls burning in hell? I think the smarter faithful ones realize these, so they do the usual - wrap it in "its not literal" mantra while church does exactly the opposite. And then cherry-picking some rules they like and ignoring the rest (like stoning to death non-virgin women during marriage or all gays which should include all pedophile priests, I know its old testament but since its not rejected part of christianity, its still valid). But now you created completely different sect my friends, just like Jesus(TM) created completely different sect of judaism (which is a sect of X and that's the sect of Y till we get probably to zoroastroanism or something similar, who knows what beduin tribes believed in during those times). I simply can't, with straight face, being raised without faith (thus no childhood indoctrination thats extremely hard to shed), accept modern religions any more than I can accept say greek or roman mythology. Same type of moral stories, god(s) on par with original abrahamic god (vengeful, cruel, not caring), and lets be honest - if there is any God, it certainly doesn't completely change its personality just because somebody writes another book about it every millenium or so and claims to be his son/prophet/something. There is a million small and big facts against all this, and 1/3 books written by people millenia ago for it. Very easy to pick the side.
Iolaum 3y ago
influence over public opinion ;)
- b112 3y ago
  See my upthread response, but that has nothing to do with it. State control over the church, and church control over the state, is a huge, massive, immense change. Nothing comparable to any other legal change you've ever hear of.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    State control over church _doctrine_, yes, that's sacred, but state control over church _finance_ is a much more temporal business. Being a church isn't like diplomatic immunity. Allowing a church to build a huge opaque financial empire is the sort of thing that leads to theses being nailed to doors.
  - ggm 3y ago
    Why? No dispute how hard it would be, after all, the pope has a lot of tanks. But hard is not the same as immense. Churches pay wage tax, land tax, fines, church leaders even sometimes go to jail. Churches pay purchase tax, take out insurance, although they don't cover acts of God..
    - pjc50 3y ago
      > the pope has a lot of tanks Is this a mangling of Stalin's "how many divisions has the Pope?" The Vatican has not had a significant military since the war of Italian Unification ended in 1870.
rich_sasha 3y ago
Probably a one size fits all approach. Small religious organisations have small-scale budgets and are overseen by their members in some form or another. But then there's megachurches which are basically hedge funds. That bit btw doesn't bother me either, so much as lack of transparency regarding political donations etc. Not American either so meh.
octacat 3y ago
Political power. In the democratic country going against the church means definitely loosing a lot of votes the next election.

by akudha 3y ago

Unlike other nonprofits, religious organizations don't have to fully disclose all financial information to the IRS lol. What is the logic behind this? Why makes religious organizations special?

b112 3y ago

lol. What is the logic behind this? Why makes religious organizations special? The response to this is literally thousands of pages long. However, even reading recent, modern western/europeans history in depth (last 200 years), will give you more insight here. As for "why is it still this way?", you would quite literally have to rip rights out of nations constitutions, re-assess endless past case history, get people to vote on it, and on and on. There is literally no larger change you could pick, than changing the legal roles of church and state.

hutzlibu 3y ago
"The first clause in the Bill of Rights states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”"
- b112 3y ago
  Unless you are agreeing with me, I will suspect that you don't get the point of this part of the amendment. It's about hands off. Understand, the church (legally) predates, and is not controlled by the state in western legal case history and laws. The church came first, not state. Again, just describing how we got here.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    I am not an american, but I understand it as a clear intended separation of state and church. So also no privileges especially for churches.
    - fsckboy 3y ago
      no government interference in people's private religious choices or life, so that has been interpreted as no taxation of churches. But churches can't commit ritual murder or anything.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    > the church (legally) predates, and is not controlled by the state in western legal case history and laws. Henry VIII would like a word.
    - b112 3y ago
      He became the head of both church and state, they were still separate.
      - pjc50 3y ago
        No they weren't! That's what the Americans were rebelling against and specifically wrote the church-state separation to prevent. The result was both Crown control over the appointment of bishops, bishops having temporal legislative power in the House of Lords, and (relevant to this story) the seizure and in some cases destruction of basically all Church property. The UK then spent hundreds more years fighting over this relationship. People are still writing angry articles about the monarch being inextricably linked to the church in 2011: https://www.businessinsider.com/why-its-absurd-for-britain-to-allow-catholics-to-marry-the-monarch-2011-11?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/why-its-absurd-for-britain-t... The Church of England is a state religion. It is part of the state (Crown), controlled by the state (King), and until the 19th century participation in it was effectively mandatory to participate in public life. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_Acts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_Acts)
  - mattbrewsbytes 3y ago
    Technically the religious organization in question came after the US was formed and had 23 states.
- fsckboy 3y ago
  "establishment" means declaring a religion as being "the" state religion, as the Church of England is (or at least was) for the UK, or the Orthodox Church in eastern European kingdoms. it's not about, for example, a charter for a new religion you'd like to found.
- solatic 3y ago
  "... or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Taxation, and subsequent compliance costs, serve as restrictions on such exercise.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    So does the prohibition of ritual murder. (Some of the more extreme Asatru for example do feel limited.) When there are rules for everzone and only some organisations are excempt on religious grounds - then those religious organisation have an advantage over every not privileged organisation, making them effectivly state supported. Which I think should be indeed forbidden. So the state can and should continue to support all kinds of social organisations. But on an equal and fair base.
    - wanttocomment 3y ago
      Yes, the founding fathers had in mind a plurality of European religion, not every possible belief around the world from Africa to the Amazon. The idea you could create one government that could accommodate all those is the ridiculous contradiction. They would laugh at the suggestion there should be some equality of human sacrifice and communion.
      - tomrod 3y ago
        It's cool. They were sloppy in their wording and their philosophy. We have almost 250 years of lived experience now, we can revisit the notion and not let it be a golden cow. It's going to be hard to wade through the myths and hagiographies, but we'll come out a better society on the other end.
        wanttocomment 3y ago
        Do you think it is possible to accommodate all those religions in one government? I agree with you that it's not a golden cow, but I typically have to question posts like this one to get that admission. Claiming authority from the constitution when you don't believe in it is a cheap rhetorical technique to appear interested in historical America when you aren't. The main conclusion I would draw is that we have no obligation of "fairness or equality" towards every religion. Our system was built to accomodate certain kinds and those that aren't in direct conflict, it seems a pretty good compromise that's hard to work around.
b112 3y ago
While I typically do not respond to downvotes, this is one time I should, because downvoting someone for expressing reality, shooting the messenger, is not reasonable. This is not a case of "omg that guy supports the church!". This is a case of nation's founding documents, thousands of years of case law, court case after court case. Even if every single (for example) American supported a change in the legal staus of churches/religions, it would take decades, for all state govenments, federal government, and hundreds of new pieces of legislation to be passed, to even get close to changing this status. And that's with everyone on board. And the same is true of the entire west.
- pjc50 3y ago
  > the same is true of the entire west. The status of churches (and especially what counts as a valid "church" or "religion", especially non-Christian ones!) varies across the Western world. There is no one approach.
- defrost 3y ago
  > And the same is true of the entire west. Yeah .. Nah. Religions aren't generally exempt from taxation or immune to prosecution in Australia. Those parts of a religions income that are used for charity can be exempt from taxation if the proper paperwork is filed and continues to operate in a transparent manner subject to audits, etc > To access income tax exemption, a registered religious institution must be a registered charity and endorsed by us as exempt from income tax. [1] Mind you Australia also recently and famously jailed a tier two 2iC Vatican official Cardinal George Pell so hardly a friend of the Church .. but a country generally agreed to be part of "the West" | "Global North" etc. [1] https://www.ato.gov.au/Non-profit/Getting-started/In-detail/Types-of-charities/Tax-concessions-for-ACNC-registered-religious-institutions/ https://www.ato.gov.au/Non-profit/Getting-started/In-detail/...
akudha 3y ago
Every dollar made by every person and organization needs to be accounted for, to the government. Unless you’re a mega church? I don’t understand why asking religious organizations to report their financial activities (especially the massive orgs that have the resources to do so, unlike teeny tiny 10 member churches) would be such a big deal. But hey, I am no constitutional or government scholar. I am just a dude sick and tired of a rigged system, what do I know?
- boeingUH60 3y ago
  Has more to do with the country. In some European countries, all churches are required to report their income to the government.
saiya-jin 3y ago
> There is literally no larger change you could pick, than changing the legal roles of church and state. Sounds like yesterday was too late then. The little good that comes from church is even these days overshadowed by how much they fuck with politics literally everywhere around the globe (= distorting elections in their favor, which means less progress/reversals and less human rights at minimum, and usually they go much further). Also their moral compass is constantly fucked up, they still are covering homosexual pedophilia on truly gigantic scale, as they were so desperately doing last 100 years. Also, does church helps all people equally including other religions, unlike lets say "mother" Teresa who, apart from stealing millions $$ in donations was by many accounts very selective to whom to provide care, based on their religion and generally favored sick to suffer as much as possible, for some properly fucked up "christian" reasons. Some saint she was... Lets face it, religions almost unanonymously lost god/God and the original simple ideas. I look at history, since talk is very cheap but 2000 years of walking the talk has actually some weight, I mean all the weight you ever need to make an opinion. In Christianity's case its properly trivial - you have literal 10 rules and thats it, the rest are fantasies of semi-lucid humans from bronze age or right after, that would often end up in insane asylums these days. How much mental gymnastics believers have to do daily to stick with all that bureaucratic/managerial/political/financial stuff and feel righteous and above everybody else is astounding. Also tiny fact - only 1/3rd of the world is christian. So maybe 110 billions of human souls burning in hell? I think the smarter faithful ones realize these, so they do the usual - wrap it in "its not literal" mantra while church does exactly the opposite. And then cherry-picking some rules they like and ignoring the rest (like stoning to death non-virgin women during marriage or all gays which should include all pedophile priests, I know its old testament but since its not rejected part of christianity, its still valid). But now you created completely different sect my friends, just like Jesus(TM) created completely different sect of judaism (which is a sect of X and that's the sect of Y till we get probably to zoroastroanism or something similar, who knows what beduin tribes believed in during those times). I simply can't, with straight face, being raised without faith (thus no childhood indoctrination thats extremely hard to shed), accept modern religions any more than I can accept say greek or roman mythology. Same type of moral stories, god(s) on par with original abrahamic god (vengeful, cruel, not caring), and lets be honest - if there is any God, it certainly doesn't completely change its personality just because somebody writes another book about it every millenium or so and claims to be his son/prophet/something. There is a million small and big facts against all this, and 1/3 books written by people millenia ago for it. Very easy to pick the side.

Iolaum 3y ago

influence over public opinion ;)

b112 3y ago
See my upthread response, but that has nothing to do with it. State control over the church, and church control over the state, is a huge, massive, immense change. Nothing comparable to any other legal change you've ever hear of.
- pjc50 3y ago
  State control over church _doctrine_, yes, that's sacred, but state control over church _finance_ is a much more temporal business. Being a church isn't like diplomatic immunity. Allowing a church to build a huge opaque financial empire is the sort of thing that leads to theses being nailed to doors.
- ggm 3y ago
  Why? No dispute how hard it would be, after all, the pope has a lot of tanks. But hard is not the same as immense. Churches pay wage tax, land tax, fines, church leaders even sometimes go to jail. Churches pay purchase tax, take out insurance, although they don't cover acts of God..
  - pjc50 3y ago
    > the pope has a lot of tanks Is this a mangling of Stalin's "how many divisions has the Pope?" The Vatican has not had a significant military since the war of Italian Unification ended in 1870.

rich_sasha 3y ago

Probably a one size fits all approach. Small religious organisations have small-scale budgets and are overseen by their members in some form or another. But then there's megachurches which are basically hedge funds. That bit btw doesn't bother me either, so much as lack of transparency regarding political donations etc. Not American either so meh.

octacat 3y ago

Political power. In the democratic country going against the church means definitely loosing a lot of votes the next election.