And this, folks, is why we should tax religious organizations…. ~~Like every other country I know of.~~ (edit, apparently I knew less than I thought I did. I think what I did was conflate a 'church tax' with churches paying income tax. apparently that's a thing where the state collects your tithe for you... if you attend or whatever.)
this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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Why don't they do it? There's no logical explanation for it.
A long time ago, it was so that they could use the additional resources for helping the needy and less fortunate instead of the government. The idea being a Church was a community organization and would know better than the government what the community needed.
In order to get the tax credit, the church agreed to never get involved politically with anything.
Fast forward to now, and churches are violating that agreement in a big way
Now they deserve to be taxed.
Thanks, I forgot about the background completely. I agree, be it a mosque, synagogue, church, ... tax them all.
If they make money, they should pay, like everyone else.
they can deduct actual charitable contributions, for things like running a soup kitchen, and stuff. but that's subject to auditing, and not at all allowed to go into 'charitable funds' that dish out to the board members.
There is actually more history behind it. Back in the days when the local king would collect taxes from his subjects, churches wouldn't have to pay. This was because taking money from the church was considered a sin. Whilst donating to the church was a way to absolve yourself from sins. The church would take care of your immortal soul, if you'd just continue to pay them. This lead to a well funded church and no taxes being paid by the church.
How anybody ever agreed to this I don't know. We've invented something called an immortal soul, which is what you actually are instead of your body. We've also invented something called hell, which is endless suffering for your immortal soul. If you don't follow the rules, which we've invented btw, your soul will end up in this hell. One of the rules is give us money.
But then people would just simply say, I've never followed your rules, guess I'm fucked, no point in following the rules now. But wait, we've got a special deal if you call within 30 minutes and give us money. We can fix your soul so it isn't fucked and you can try again to follow the rules. We would also like you to tell us what you did wrong, so we can use it to blackmail you, I mean so we know what part of the soul to fix.
For the same reason we don’t tax the rich. Corruption.
Historically, the church was the source of social safety nets in society. in the modern era, that's changed to government-ran safety nets (well fare, social security, etc).
there was also some even older precedence of the church running some of the government, so that was payment for that.
What are some countries that tax religious orgs? I honestly can't think of any.
It seems I made a mistake in that assertion, or missremembering the last time I looked into it. regardless i was wrong about other (western) countries not including religious orgs as tax exempt.
$5 million fine, eh? That's merely the cost of doing business.
Not really. It’s way way less than that
That's barely a fucking fraction of a rounding error of a sparrow's fart.
Why would anyone ever round a sparrow’s fart?
For tax loopholes.
I didn’t realize farts were taxable.
The tax code is a dark and mysterious place built for the rich.
Oh his, I was about to say a five million fine goes against the tenets of Monopoly Man, bless his appointed CEOs on Earth
That's not what that means. It means it's just an additional, and "normal", line item on the balance sheet, like toilet paper or the water bill.
Edit: Reposting as I replied the wrong comment initially.
It’s not normal. It’s hugely undervalued. Not getting taxed on 32 billion for an extended period of time is completely game changing. It’s like saying having to pay an $8 fine for the stolen company car is just the normal cost of doing business. That being said I see where you’re coming from. They get different rules so it’s probably seen as ok in their eyes to get an $8 car or in this case to steal the car themselves and pay an $8 fine later
The phrase "cost of doing business" doesn't mean "bankrupt" or "righteous penalty", it means, especially in this context, that it's an normalized and accepted business expenditure because of our corrupt regulatory system whereby white collar crime is NOT punished by meaningful punitive actions that would create a deterrence. Instead, any punitive measures can simply be accounted for as a "cost of doing business".
Let me give you a hyperbolic but extremely simple example:
CEO: Let's commit a fraud worth $100m
VP: But that's illegal
CEO: Yes, but the fine would only be around $5m
CFO: Perfect, I'll add a $5m expenditure under the "cost of doing business" line item
VP: Wow, that's a great $5m expenditure, we'll net $95m in profit
CEO: Yep, that's just the cost of doing business.
Make sense?
I’m aware of what you are saying and I agree but only to a point. I’m saying that even as a “normal” cost of doing business the size of the fine is not normal. To take your example it’s like this:
CEO: “Lets commit 32 BILLION dollars of fraud.”
VP: “That’s illegal.”
CEO: “Yes but the fine would only be around $5m.”
VP: “Sir, I’m not condoning this but that estimate seems absurdly low for the size of the fraud?
CEO: “You’re right, the fine should be much much higher. Can we afford to get a $500m fine as a normal operating cost?”
CFO: “We can. I’ll also talk to my connections in Washington to get the amount lowered and anything else will be gravy. Also, VP you’re fired!”
It's just so politicians can say they levied multimillion dollar fines. And the voters are placated.
If the average APY is 5%, it's about a day of interest.
Yeah we need to set fines to amount attempted to savelikelihood of getting away with itpenalty modifier. They do this math before committing these crimes, the fine needs to actually deter them
tl;dr:
$32,000,000,000 fraud
$5,000,000 fine
So they were charged a 0.016% transaction fee.
Ah yes, 5m of the 150+B in the bank.
That's ... Nothing
Is that even a month's interest on $32B?
1.5 days
Fucking hell. The penalty should be like 90% above for anything over $5M. So a tidy $28.8B. Bet they won't try that shit again.
Literally feel like I got the wind knocked out of me
Gee, I wonder how the Mormon church would feel if it's members starting hiding their wealth to avoid paying the 10% they demand from them to get into heaven?
They can just lie. They don't need to prove anything. Thing is, they're brainwashed to think God will bless them more if they sacrifice 10%, so they go to the ends of the earth to pay, to their own massive detriment.
I have heard of some Mormons having to provide the church with their tax paper work to show they tithed properly. This is done through the threat of excommunication. Not sure how prevalent it is.
Yeah, that's my understanding as well. I had a friend in the 90s who was a proud ex-communicant of the Mormon church, and according to him that was the practice then as well. You gave them whatever they asked for (pay stubs, bank statements, tax returns, etc) and they calculated your tithe for you.
Just like Jesus taught us….no wait.
Step 1: Jesus
Step 2: Joseph Smith
Step 3: prophet
Dum dum dum dum dum!
Ah yes, the cost of doing BUSINESS
Their not just screwing kids. They're screwing everyone.
The priesthood was invented when the first knave met the first fool.
Nah. The first knave got away with "Holy shit! Look!" frantic pointing all day long. It was later knaves who invented religion. The fools got wise to the basics.
It's a Voltaire quotation, I should have mentioned.
What’s new?
They have one extra m in their name