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Quote by: Gods_Mercenary  A great amount of clerics do contribute a lot to society. Plus, in the catholic church's case, most of them don't make much to tax anyway, their income is in the form of accomodation. They can accumulate wealth, simply because they have few expenses, and taxing that at the end of their lives, provided they have no dependents, would seem more reasonable. I could see taxing a diocese, but you'd often end up taxing charities, since it's run with the same money as the diocese. Perhaps you could set a level of income for clerics that would get taxed, since I'm sure some ministers and church fat cats make abhorrent amounts of money (the preachers in the ghetto who drive caddy's come to mind), but there's also a question of church and state, if religion is a tax base, will govt. owe something to religion? At any rate, I don't think there's enough actual profit being made in this business to make a difference. |
Well, it would be up to the tax collector to find out, rather then depending on your guesswork. How much property tax would be due for those fancy churches in rich neighborhoods?
As it is now a phychologist is not getting any speical favors from the government, nor other such busnesses that are supposed to help people overcome their guilts or worldly problems. Heck, people can go to a nightclub and dance to the music and start to feel great and yet those social clubs at taxed, and so a chruch which acts like a place to socialize and to be entertained should also be taxed. Lots of churches make people feel good but that does not mean those people are being good, because Monday morning they are back doing the same things they need to confess about next Sunday, via that addictive cycle.
Now the Salvation Army might be an exception to what I am talking about, and everyone knows that.
Perhaps a tire company makes a nice profit (meaning more money then they invested) and yet they do not get any speical representation form the government relative to some return. Paying taxes is not about getting something profitable from the government, other then roads, and other the other perks that everyone else is getting (as outlined by another poster ahead of me).
Big churches operate like a business, the preachers learn business managment at their religious collage. True, a small church might just be making ends meet, but not our mega-chruches, who might spend millions to buy air time on radio and TV stations, and who pull in millions in donations. Millions of dollars that then slip outside of the mainstream economy. They tie up the roadways on Sunday morning and for speical church events, and then they turn around at tell you not to get into the spirit of a materialistic Christmass as thousands of stores depend on that season to simulate our economy. So if they think that the love of money is the root of all evil then we should help relieve them of some of those roots by taxing them, it is a moral thing to do. We need the money for pratical solutions and that would answer their prayers for a better living environment that has less poverty and so forth.