Not sure if this should be here or in Politics

Geoff: But, Churches should pay taxes.

Aura: well....yeah

deuce916: They're only harbouring criminals, including god.

Zanjan: Religions are supposed to be non-profit charitable organizations; they're a community service group. Taxes are for capital gains.

Obviously, some groups have called themselves a religion so they can abuse charity to line their own pockets but, this is a matter of due diligence on the part of the government. There's a reason we need cops.

In Canada, religious organizations have to register as corporations; accounts are legally audited extensively to determine if there is gain and to ensure services have indeed been rendered for free, in order to retain their NPCO license number. If auditors find that any profit is made, the organization isn't breaking the law by doing that but they WILL have to pay taxes on that figure and will also lose their NPCO number if they exceed regulation maximums.

Briefly, in Canada, no religious organization has automatic tax free status.

Nevertheless, there always loopholes and we know who those guys are taking advantage of it, making religion into a business through creative accounting devices. I don't really want to describe types of approaches lest it gives ideas for copycats. Suffice to say we know who the sneaks are, and God will smite them.

Nicotina: Churches are a business and ought to be taxed as such.

Zanjan: Of course, taxes are the answer to everything.

"Churches" refer to Christian establishments - you'll have to technically demonstrate how they fit the classification of a business. Would you tax Synagogues, Mosques and Temples too?
Religions accept donations - they don't charge fees and set prices on services.

A working individual has to pay income tax and a bunch of other deductions off their paycheck; their take home pay suffers further with education tax, emergency response tax, property tax and sales taxes. That's double dipping. With what little he has left after paying bills, he donates to a worthy cause and you want to tax it again. That's triple-dipping.

Do you work for the government?

Why not tax prostitution instead? There's more money in that. Besides, hookers walk the streets we paid to have paved.

Geoff: Aside from the final sentence, I fully agreed with your first post, Zanjan. Yes, any charitable acts taken by any religious establishment should be taken into account in their favour - just as happens with a business. While I am happy to concede that there are plenty of religious groups who carry out laudable charitable acts, there are just as many who use their profits to line the pockets of those who run them. There are also plenty who use their money to fund political lobbying (certainly in the UK and US, I wouldn't doubt that it happens in Canada and Australia too), those groups should be taxed to the same extent as any other business. The same criteria should be applied to secular groups that claim charitable status but pay lavish salaries to their employees, or fund excessive political lobbying*

And, you are right, I oversimplified my opening post - I of course meant all profit making religious groups, not merely Christian ones. It just happens that the Christians ones are making the most money, with the possible exception of Scientologists, but I don't really count them as a religion. So the question then falls on the individual, do they donate to a religious group that can not demonstrate to an outsider observer that they are using that money for good causes.

And yes, if prostitution was legalised, it could not only be regulated, but taxed. The same goes for illicit drugs. You can tax illegal activities - OK, that may be another over-simplification, but suffice to say, you can't tax explicitly illegal activities.


//Footnote
|* IMO all political lobbying should be prohibited and anyone seeking to make a political statement in a democratic society should appeal directly to the electorate, and let them make up their minds, rather than attempting to grab the attention of the elected officials through occasionally dubious means.

Aura: Having lived for 4 years in Amsterdam, I've seen both the best situation in prostitution (ladies who go into it by their own free will, knowing full well what they are doing and keeping all the money they make themselves) and the worse (ladies who get manipulated, isolated and forced into it, who have to give all their money to a pimp) I must say a statement like "there's more money in prostitution" shows only ignorance.
Of all the professions around, a hooker is the worse off as time goes by. And I'm not even talking about desirability, just pure economics. Inflation is brutal on the ladies. The price of their services is pretty much fixed and doesn't change for decades. They really can't raise it since there will always be someone willing to do it for less out of fear or desperation. Overheads do increase with everything else. They have basically nowhere to turn to get help against violence in their work and when it happens, which is often, they are out of the workforce for weeks, sometimes months. They have no real way of showing income since their clients won't sign receipts and the mentality that they must make good money as shown here works very much against them.
Call girl can give more reward but the risks increase so much more in that case. No one knows where they go, which is the point, and there are a lot of freaks around. Getting a pimp who in theory is supposed to protect the ladies in those circumstances is not much better since the reality is that they then have just added more risk of getting beat up.

Legal prostitution would sound like a great way to get more taxes to those who have no idea what's really going on. But the reality is that there is very little to get there.

Geoff: Well, I wasn't drawing a moral or economic case for it; just pointing out that if something is prohibited then it's impossible for the government to do anything about managing or enforcing regulation on it, let alone impose taxes.

Zanjan: Geoff: "The same criteria should be applied to secular groups that claim charitable status but pay lavish salaries to their employees, or fund excessive political lobbying* "

One can't expect the government to do everything for us - we're not babies; it's up to each individual to do their own research on any group asking for donations and there's not much recourse for those who don't - they get scammed. The government doesn't have the resources to police all that. Taxes wont help this situation, auditing will. Public watch dogs are on the ball, ready to skewer corporate pigs.

Meanwhile, this isn't the dark ages anymore - now, all religions submit a treasurer's report to their congregation, who may study it carefully and submit input on how the funds are spent or saved.No organization can operate without financial support. A bunch of people having meetings in their own homes isn't cost free to the host either.

Any group that's involved in government lobby shouldn't be funded by a religious organization. That's not their business so one needs to have documented proof in hand that's what's happening before lambasting them.

Zanjan: Aura "I must say a statement like "there's more money in prostitution" shows only ignorance."

You took this out of context. My statement refereed to government taxing the professional field - has nothing to do with how the money comes in. The government doesn't care what one's business concerns are. Regulations are up to the people to address; generally, it's the people working in that field who must speak for themselves.

Wherever the government controls regulations on vices, there will be sin taxes. Those taxes pay for policing the controls.

Whatever psychological problems come with prostitution are addressed by the helping hands of people who are members of religious organizations. That's a social problem, not a logistical one.

We've seen what can happen when a government steps in to try to socialize its subjects; nobody likes a dictatorship.

Nicotina: We all know the Catholic Church has almost no wealth at all. //sarcasm

If people feel a need to worship any deity, take part in any religion then they ought to be free to do so and they ought to be free to pay for it also.

NB - This is for adults, who can make an informed choice. Obviously the religion can not promote hurting people.

Geoff: Not all good deeds are carried out in the name of a deity.

And, I would posit that those who do carry out good deeds would still do so if religion did not exist.

A professed faith (or lack thereof) in god is not a requirement, nor a yardstick of someone's charity.

Zanjan: If one taxes because of a belief and a few dollars in the bank, one must tax atheists - they're a group too. Nobody's talking about increasing taxes on the rich, of course.

Nicotina: Atheists ARE taxed, that's the point Zanjan. Atheists are not given the same protection as those who believe in a deity. A "place of worship" does not have to pay property tax, while a place where Atheists gather IS taxed.
http://mindprod.com/religion/taxsubsidy.html

The discussion os about taxing "places of worship'. Why should I subsidize a persons religious beliefs?

Geoff: Atheists are not a group. There are atheist groups; but they are as disparate as any two different religious denominations.

Nicotina: True that Atheists do not tend to hold a meeting each week. If a group of Atheists decided to meet & discuss their opinions the "meeting place" would be subject to property tax, whereas a believe in a "supernatural being" means that property tax is not paid.
To be fair, all religions ought to be taxed and contribute to society as do other identifiable groups.

dr_frankenstein: I think all churches should have to pay tax. In my mind if they have a payroll then its taxable. I agree with a lot of the points here.
We have hudderite colonies, where I live! They pay as little tax as humanly possible. Also they were trying to opt out of driver licenses recently, yet they wanted the ability to drive still.

Zanjan: Nicotina, you're supposing the place of worship isn't in a rented building and sits on land that's actually owned by the given religious community, not rented land. Few religious communities have this luxury - they'd have to have a a very large religious congregation to support it. So, that's a different matter then general taxation.

By the way, a tax subsidy isn't the same thing as tax exemption - they just pay a lower tax than a business due to the fact they're a non-profit organization that provides a service to the community, similar to a playground or Museum but are actually schools.

If they're social clubs, then what about the Lions and Canadian Legion? Do you have any idea how many bursaries, scholarships and free electric scooters these organizations give away to the poor? Religions used to run hospitals where patients got better care than in government facilities.

How about their funding and providing volunteers, food, medicine, schools, clothing and libraries to third world development agencies? How about their programs for child care and emergency transportation? Guess how much of a financial burden they relieve your government of? Where do you think government taxes would go? How about a nice fat pension for senators and anyone who's served in politics for at least 6 years?

Nicotina: It's not different at all Zanjan. Even if the place of worship is rented then there will be a tax break on the rent paid. Most places of worship do own the building & the land. How many churches are in a leased building in most cities?
Belief in a "supreme being" should not result in special treatment.

Churches are profitable businesses.
http://www.exmormon.org/d6/drupal/LDS-Church-financial-data-filed-in-Canada
http://www.toronto.anglican.ca/about-the-diocese/corporate-information/audited-financial-statements/

Zanjan: Nicotina, I don't think you understand how an organization operates and on what level or scale these statements address.

The Anglicans - Financial audit for 2013. Those aren't big numbers for the area, region, and population covered in a year, particularly when paying for scholars' salary and lots of printed material - do you even know what a campaign is and involves?

Toronto's population is 2,791,140, growing by 38,000 each year. They cover rural and small towns around the area too. You might be able to buy a modest two or three bedroom older home on a small, 41' wide lot for half a million bucks in that city. A church p[property has to be much bigger because it has to hold many people, have several meeting rooms, kitchen, foyer, at least 4 bathrooms, small playground for kids, and lots of parking.

Do you know what their endowment fund was for? How many churches did this Diocese have to fund due to a local deficiency of contributions? Where did their ordained and lay leaders teach - Africa? You can see numbers, you don't know how to explain them.

LDS Church - that wasn't an audit. However, I happen to know they do run farms, which are a business but a little creative accounting justifies that, apparently. Since tithes are mandatory, a specific percentage each and every member must pay the church, those can't be considered as donations.

Perhaps they're fees or church taxes; in that case, they have to explain where the money must go - do they go to a charitable cause, particularly those who are not Mormons? Do they share their financial records with all their members and present explanations for exactly where the money went?

I can't answer those questions because I'm not an Anglican or Mormon. You probably aren't either.

Nicotina: Zanjan, please free to give an explanation as to why belief in a "pretend friend" equates to tax free status.

Zanjan: Your question is illogical.

Nicotina: I shall rephase the question. Why should a business be exempt from taxes merely due to a belief in a deity?

Zanjan: Demonstrate it's a business - the government doesn't care what the business believes in as long as its license to operate and legal papers are in order. The government owns businesses too - does it tax itself because it believes its a public service?

Geoff: It provides a service and takes in money in exchange for that service.

//Edit - clarifying that sentence.