3. "churches make money via essentially donations" In response to Reply # 0
people who tithe/ donate do not have that money accounted as taxable income
i get your question but a good church ~98% really does wonderful things for the community so in a sense the government gets "paid" because that money is sewn back to the community
TheAlbionist Member since Jul 04th 2011 3306 posts
Fri Apr-17-15 12:47 PM
6. "I'm usually for taxing everyone we can..." In response to Reply # 0 Fri Apr-17-15 12:48 PM by TheAlbionist
... but you can't start taxing non-profits whose overriding purpose is to give back to the community.
Church tithing is just tax and spend by any other name tbh... you don't need to take more away.
Of course we DO need to make sure that any salaried members of churches are taxed properly though. People should be strongly discouraged from becoming rich off the donations of the faithful. I'd probably favour some form of salary capping for non-profits to ensure that the donations ARE going back into the community too.
>... but you can't start taxing non-profits whose overriding >purpose is to give back to the community. > >Church tithing is just tax and spend by any other name tbh... >you don't need to take more away. > >Of course we DO need to make sure that any salaried members of >churches are taxed properly though. People should be strongly >discouraged from becoming rich off the donations of the >faithful. I'd probably favour some form of salary capping for >non-profits to ensure that the donations ARE going back into >the community too.
Salary capping might be hard. Having a steeper progressive tax curve would be more interesting, as well as a clause requiring all salaries above a certain level to be detailed individually in the accounts.
8. "FOR THE LAST FUCKING TIME" In response to Reply # 7
NFL teams are for-profit corporations and pay taxes. The NFL is the association of the teams. There's nothing wrong with the League being tax-exempt if the teams are paying taxes.
12. "People should really just read about what a 990 tax return is." In response to Reply # 0
It's not as simple as "churches don't pay taxes". Churches and every other tax-exempt organization have to file the 990 tax return which details all of their income and expenses, and they have to prove in this return that they deserve to maintain that tax-exempt status. They report where their contributions are coming from, including the names and addresses of large contributors. They have to specify what their exempt purpose is (which needs to fit IRS guidelines) and they need to report what types of activities they did throughout the year for that exempt purpose. They need to also detail all of their expenses, whether that money is going towards other charities, salaries of board members and/or officers (those salaries end up getting taxed just like anyone else's income), marketing, whatever. Those board members have all their info reported as well. Any income they receive during the year that is unrelated to their exempt purpose ends up getting taxes on a separate return called a 990T - for unrelated business revenue.
The bottom line is that if they are filing the return correctly and honestly, then they get to keep that tax-exempt status because they really are putting money back into the community much like any other charity of non-profit. Are some of them shady and lie about what they report on the return, yes, just like any other type of business or individual person my be shady on their taxes.
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