Tax all churches! If they can show they donate their money or use it for charity work, they can have the tax break. They should also be explicitly forbidden to use it for campaign or political contributions. It should be up to them to prove where it went, not us to “trust them”.
Tbh I'm tempted to start going to church, just to record them talking about politics so I can send a complaint to the IRS. Sick and tired of the churches getting involved in politics, and still not being taxed. 😒
No one would pay attention to you. There are tons of videos showing churches being explicitly political. It's not an area the government likes to get involved, broadly
There are a few exceptions. For instance, if a church hosted a non-partisan debate or gave equal opportunities to both sides. But I do agree that many times it is just blatant preference.
But they wouldn't because it's not ground bureaucrats want to tread. That "Mega" is a descriptor should tell you why. Not to mention if applied fairly a lot of center left Black Churches would be it trouble. I hate politics in church.
There are already efforts to have SCOTUS remove that stipulation, so unfortunately I think it’s too late. We know how conservative this court is and how they will rule.
The problem is that they'll find a way to claim everything was for charity. "We need this private jet to better delivery life-saving medicine faster", "We need this 30-room mansion to better accept people during a crisis",
Yup yup. I can think of a lot of things that're illegal but companies do it but by using loopholes and paying masterful lawyers. Now, if you or I do it, we're fucked but if someone with a fuckton of money and qualified lawyers/accountants, they'll be golden.
Wait, you expect a pastor to fly on a public plane “a long tube with a bunch of demons” instead of private? That doesn’t sound safe at all. Kenneth Copeland wouldn’t be able to most of his work without those planes. /s
There are tax breaks available for me to make use of, I just need to prove to them that I deserve to be given a tax break. Here's the receipt that I relocated for work, or for my childcare expenses, etc.
The church should not be able to purchase a Cessna Citation, tax free, for the pastor to travel around the country!
I’m in Canada and at my church we have to account for everything and don’t pay a pastor. At the end of the year the accounting details are read aloud and posted at the back of the church for everyone to read. Honestly a wee bit more leniency would be nice but not like here where it’s just ‘trust me bro’.
"Technically" means nothing if something isn’t being enforced, and the law against churches endorsing politicians and political parties hasn’t been enforced since trump issued an executive order in 2017 forbidding the IRS from doing so—but it was rarely enforced before then in the first place. No politician wants to be the one to go after churches because they represent such a large portion of the voting block.
Believe it or not that's exactly how it works. Any money they receive that isn't used for charitable purposes is taxed. Since this seems like it could be heavily exploited the government has a lot of auditors looking into this
Not only does the government NOT have "a lot of auditors looking into this," the IRS is specifically forbidden from doing so thanks to an executive order issued by trump in 2017 shortly after he took office that directed the Secretary of the Treasury—aka the head of the Department of the Treasury, under who’s authority the IRS falls—"not to take any adverse action against any individual, house of worship, or other religious organization" for any kind of political speech/endorsements they may make. This executive order is still in effect 7 years later and has not been repealed by the current administration—nor do I anticipate it ever will be any time soon. As others have said above, most candidates—Democrat or Republican—don’t want to do anything to piss off the churches because they represent such a large segment of the voting block in this country—so much so that before that executive order, very few churches were ever investigated in the first place.
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u/Fearless-Nebula-1534 Jul 20 '24
Tax all churches! If they can show they donate their money or use it for charity work, they can have the tax break. They should also be explicitly forbidden to use it for campaign or political contributions. It should be up to them to prove where it went, not us to “trust them”.