This past weekend, a group of churches made a coordinated effort to challenge a long-standing provision of tax law. Put simply, it bars churches from overt political activity if they want to maintain their tax exempt status. As usual, the pastors complaining of being aggrieved don't quite get it. You see, any tax exempt non-profit group has to abstain from political activity. Doesn't matter if its a church, the local arts organization, or the local SCCA region.
If the pastors in question want to turn their churches into political pulpits, they are perfectly free to do so. They just have to play along with the same rules as the rest of us do.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Tax the Churches
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2 comments:
I'm assuming, of course, that you would exclude The First Church of the DC Comitictician and Latter Day Citizens of the United Federation of Planets from this. Afterall, our tax-exempt church is only advocating for a government that would bring about a total nuclear holocaust- what's the harm in that?
Seriously, if I had my way- I'd plant undercover IRS agents in every church in America- one mention of politics from pulpit and the tax forms would arrive in February with a long list of penalties that come from not paying taxes. They can't have both ways- they want to teach creation fables in school as fact or teach children that human life begins when the sperm meets the egg- fine, cough up the dough. Hell, we could open five new schools in every city by taxing Catholic bingo profits alone.
Sorry, Rev - gotta pay to play!
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