this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
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I will consider this for v4, although I'm still torn on whether that's a good idea. It would give religious entities a direct reason to influence politics even more. Any good reasons to the benefit other than more tax revenue?
They're already influencing politics, and there's nothing being done to stop them. There's no reason to believe that they will stop or slow down.
Yea after more research this is the conclusion I've come to. I think ending the tax-exempt status of religious entities is the best solution to stop the problem.
i think there is potential to do one better and find a more productive solution. start a crackdown, investigate religious entities that are clearly making a profit from rental land. threaten them with removal of tax exemption. investigate institutions that participate in political activity. threaten them with taxes.
if the IRS would start doing this for all the ultra wealthy, this will be a natural antecedent to that process.
i don’t see why it has to be an all or nothing deal, unless i am missing something huge.
Nope, that would be definitely seen as religious persecution. Only way is to equally end all religious tax exemptions simultaneously.
oh sorry there’s another key fact to this, religious institutions are tax exempt under 501(c)(3) in the same way as all other charitable organizations.
so going after “religious organizations” already means you are going to have to define which 501c3s are “allowed” or not—and unfortunately there’s a lot of crossover of semi-but-not-really religious groups. so any attempt at un-tax-exempting churches is going to look like persecution to some because the line is going be drawn somewhere. think of yoga or mindfulness studios, plenty of which are 501c3. are they religious? well, yeah, often. all of them? certainly not. so how do you choose? in any raw “tax the church” scenario you end up litigating what consitutes “religious” or not—which looks like ( and arguably might be) proto-persecution.
so, investigate the profit. publish the documents showing a church breaking its 501c3 requirements. give them 180 days to knock it off or something, then tax them like the rest of us. you’ll probably also catch some non-religious 501c3s doing shady stuff as well—and all the better.
hope this makes sense.
edit: i guess the other assumption i made is that we don’t want to just… tax all non profits. i hope we both can agree that would be shitty lol.
edit 2: ok you don’t make that assumption, so there we go.
They shouldn't be tax exempt either. If they generate profit, they should pay tax on it. Subsidies are used to benefit specific activities, and they are easier to investigate for fraud as to whether the subsidy is spent as intended.
exactly, yes, we agree.
if they generate profit, they should pay tax on it. boom bap done. 👏
ps i found this form where you can report entities which you believe may be violating the rules by generating profit or engaging in political activities.
I think we agree to an extent, but I now believe that we should end tax exempt status completely. Remove (Title 26, Subtitle A, Chapter 1, Subchapter F - Exempt Organizations) from the U.S. Code entirely. There are too many convoluted exceptions, and it generally doesn't benefit citizens to pick and choose who pays tax and who doesn't depending on what they do.
understood! i think you may have lost me and a lot of people there though. non profits do a lot of good and their exemptions are a key part of incentivising that good.
I don't think it's that simple. I think we should get rid of the status entirely. There are plenty of nonprofits that don't do good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Point_USA#Controversies
Then better enforce the separation of church and state, to ensure they dont influence politics. I thought the reason they were not taxed was to ensure they didnt influence politics.
The sheer amount of land they would have to sell off to be able to pay their taxes would drive prices down for houses and farms. The LDS own something like 850,000 acres or something of just farm land. People could build affordable housing or just housing in places increasing supply.