There's a priest my mother knows who saved for years to be able to afford his dream car (i mean years-- he doesn't make a lot). When he finally had the money he couldn't go through with it. He ended up buying a smart-car because he felt too guilty about driving something so fancy when there were people even in his own congregation who were struggling, and instead worked on devoting even more time to helping them.
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As the saying goes: going to church (and, in this case, preaching at the pulpit) makes you a christian/catholic/etc about as much as standing in a garage makes you a car.
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*Edited because the run-on sentence confused me, and considering I wrote the damn thing I took it as a bad sign
@xvarnah Do you think taxing churches will reduce poverty? A lot of people, companies, organisations, etc., pay taxes and people are still poor.
I‘m confused.
Churches, generally, are not a good charitable pipeline for direct aid. There’s no reason that their land, holdings, and pay are not tax as equal as others.
I don't know enough about it the inner workings of church funds tbh. But I think it very largely depends on the church. The corrupt churches are not churches so it's hard for me to qualify them.
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However, as mrssuperman8942 said in her example, a lot of the genuine churches I see rely very heavily on tithes, donations and tax cuts and such to stay afloat and provide for their congregation. A lot of the ones I've been to also do things such as "host" families-- usually refugees where they provide the necessities of life for them so they can stay in the country without dying on the streets. Many (though not all) offer youth and marriage counselling, baptisms, marriage services, etc etc, some just offer a warm place people go to when they can't get out of the cold.
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If the churches are doing their actual JOBS and looking out for people, I don't see how taxing them would help because, yes, some of the taxation may help people, but don't forget there's no guarantee of that happening.
As an example, there's a fairly commonplace happening where people get their welfare cheques. A lot of them on the same day. And suddenly there's an influx of people passed out on the streets or missing entirely because the cheques went directly into funding a drug addiction.
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Obviously I'm not saying everyone does that, that it's guaranteed to happen, or any of the other options, and I'm really not looking to argue about this issue (I'm frankly too tired atm haha). It's simply just a fact that there's no guarantee taxation will put the funds to any better use than a church that actually uses the funds as they are intended.
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As a side note: churches are more intended to offer spiritual aid, which charity is a component of, than offer charitable aid directly. Admittedly I'm not much of a church-goer, but I've never been to a service that required you to pay ahead of time or after for what they provided
How is taxing the church going to help starving people? The church isn't stealing people's lunch money. If you think the government is going to help starving people with that money, you're horribly naive. Politicians will give themselves raises, funnel the money into pet projects that help very few, while a good chunk of the money simply disappears.
i'm half filipino and i can agree to this, i was there recently and saw lots of churches, very ornate and expensive, but the congregation struggle to eat, but the churches earn tax free dollars.
my church has to raise money for all of the stuff that looks like this and even then, we just get the money thats left over after we give the offerings to charity.
There are a lot of charlatans out there that abuse the tax exemption for religious institutions, but there are also smaller organizations that help people and are unable to afford a tax. Personally, I think if a religious organization takes in over a certain amount of money (say, 20 million dollars), they should have to pay a marginal tax rate. Also, they should have to publically disclose their earning.
Not going to help. Many churches are barely functional from an economic standpoint. Yes, some churches are well funded but many are not. My own pastor hasn't been paid in over a year simply because there isn't enough money coming in to pay the normal bills and taxes (churches are still required to pay some taxes). Don't get me wrong I do understand what you're getting at when you see these mega-million churches whose pastors or priests ride around in limos but the majority of churches are small, with under 50 members who have limited income and can give even less. Then you may say well okay they don't need to tax those churches but then who gets to decide which churches get taxed and which don't? What criteria would they have to fall under? The criteria they already do in order to get the tax exemption is quite large but not all organized religion meets them. In fact anyone can apply for tax exemption and many smaller businesses also have exemptions. Are we going to make them pay taxes
too? If that's the case then should anyone get a tax exemption? If yes, then again who gets to decide? The government already has a process in place to make these decisions and based on the laws they allow groups and businesses to have exemptions. Now auditing finances to make sure they still fall into that criteria is already ongoing and if you suspect some group you can report it to the IRS. But you should be aware if they have an exemption they are already scrutinized extensively every time they reapply. Reapplying for tax exemption must happen each year.
Anyone that still participates in the Catholic Church is just the worst person. Funding a global child molestation, child abuse, nun sexual slavery, billionaire dollar real estate organization is no way to get to heaven.
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As the saying goes: going to church (and, in this case, preaching at the pulpit) makes you a christian/catholic/etc about as much as standing in a garage makes you a car.
'
*Edited because the run-on sentence confused me, and considering I wrote the damn thing I took it as a bad sign
I‘m confused.
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However, as mrssuperman8942 said in her example, a lot of the genuine churches I see rely very heavily on tithes, donations and tax cuts and such to stay afloat and provide for their congregation. A lot of the ones I've been to also do things such as "host" families-- usually refugees where they provide the necessities of life for them so they can stay in the country without dying on the streets. Many (though not all) offer youth and marriage counselling, baptisms, marriage services, etc etc, some just offer a warm place people go to when they can't get out of the cold.
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If the churches are doing their actual JOBS and looking out for people, I don't see how taxing them would help because, yes, some of the taxation may help people, but don't forget there's no guarantee of that happening.
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Obviously I'm not saying everyone does that, that it's guaranteed to happen, or any of the other options, and I'm really not looking to argue about this issue (I'm frankly too tired atm haha). It's simply just a fact that there's no guarantee taxation will put the funds to any better use than a church that actually uses the funds as they are intended.
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As a side note: churches are more intended to offer spiritual aid, which charity is a component of, than offer charitable aid directly. Admittedly I'm not much of a church-goer, but I've never been to a service that required you to pay ahead of time or after for what they provided