Sure. Tax them.
Ooof, rich church? Send one our way. Our church could really use some money. We had to go to three service times and have started a campaign to build an new auditorium because of the rapid growth. Sadly, most people don't give.
OP has likely never attended a typical church and bases his distain on Mega Churches and Catholic Cathedrals. Fortunately, that really isn't the norm.
This. I sit on our church's finance council and most of the discussions are about cutting costs to keep cash flow positiveOP has likely never attended a typical church and bases his distain on Mega Churches and Catholic Cathedrals. Fortunately, that really isn't the norm.
Most churches are like this:
and this is my little church.
This church has missions locally as well as overseas, isn't sitting on some stock-pile of cash and our pastor drives a mini-van.
Those churches would have little to no tax burden, you know.OP has likely never attended a typical church and bases his distain on Mega Churches and Catholic Cathedrals. Fortunately, that really isn't the norm.
Most churches are like this:
and this is my little church.
This church has missions locally as well as overseas, isn't sitting on some stock-pile of cash and our pastor drives a mini-van.
I'm not too worried about the political agenda part - except to the extent that public money is subsidizing those political agendas. So yeah, cut tax breaks.
So no wealth and no tax burden. I'm good with that.
Our church is in a similar situation. We started a capital campaign in September that wrapped in October. We were able to raise $12 million from about 500 contributors (a total of 1,200 families on the books).
I have never attended a church (and I've been in attendance for nearly 50 years from Florida to Alaska to Texas) that didn't have a mission to serve the poor. Any church worth its salt has serving as their number one priority.
Only for specific, approved functions. Not because there's a religious angle.
I think with anything, there's a potential for abuse, but do we punish that abuser or the system? I've said this until I'm blue in the face, people are too quick to draw lines in the sand, taking these hardline stances. Mega churches are evil and corrupt, therefore all churches are too. Some cops are racists a-hats, therefore all cops are bad (despite 60 mil police/civilian interactions per year with the overwhelming majority being without incident that says otherwise)...and the list goes on.
The sad thing is, this would break the majority of Churches in this country. If you want to get the mega church money, go after the one's holding the cash, and likely you'll find their income comes from other sources, not the offering plate droppers. ..at least on Sundays. Their giving it from that Monday morning book purchase.
Another stupid false equivalency.
This. The pastors shouldn't be living in freaking multi million dollar mansions. Using God to grift.
Since Joel's income is mostly derived from book sales, wouldn't that be taxed?
I would guess that most of these don't have multi-millionaire pastors living in mansions and traveling in private jets.
www.forbes.com
Ours isn't. He and 6 church members just returned from a mission trip to Vietnam. They flew coach and slept on cots.
Know, wanting to kill babies is the democrat political agenda.
A. The word you're looking for is 'No'.
Let me know the Republican agenda that takes care of children after they're born. The number one killer of children is a non-starter to fix for Republicans. How about mental health? Nope. Children in poverty or homeless? Nope. Funding pre-school or their public educations? Nope. Feeding them? Nope.
So, again, if they are doing approved charity work, they should get the same tax breaks as anyone else.
I'm not sure how often you attend church, but what activities does a normal church partake in that you feel should be taxed? Every church I've ever belonged to only does charitable activities. I think the folks that want to tax churches have no idea what a church actually does and spends their money on.
Planned Parenthood ranks 28 of 617 in political contributions totaling $9.7 million in 2022.
You have no idea what a true Republican believes. You continually try and view a Republican through the lens of a left leaning statist. A true conservative Republican believes the federal government should protect the citizens through a strong national defense, strong borders and a strong dollar. State and local governments should provide streets, sewers, schools, that teach not indoctrinate, clinics, homeless shelters and a set of fair necessary laws which will allow everyone to achieve their goals and dreams in relative safety.
It's always easy to pick on the rich few and then penalize the many poor. For every rich one I'll show you 20 poor ones
Osteen can run allowances and travel through his church and he doesn't pay taxes on that. He can have credit cards and expense accounts issued by the church to buy whatever and he can avoid taxes on those. I'm certain it's all very legal since they can afford the best lawyers around.
FIFY
Looking at those numbers really supports my contention that church plants surpass increasing the size of a single church. For example, our church cannot support the demand, so a few of our up and coming pastors have left to start new churches in our community. None of these churches have multi-million dollar operating expenses.
