Churches and Taxes

One of our founding fathers said that the power to tax is the power to destroy. While this is true, we all submit to taxing ourselves. Clearly it is not in the government's interest to destroy us, because we are the only source of revenue. In order to accomplish this, a large number of rules and regulations have been established, in a language only known to CPAs, which limit how taxes are applied. The same argument can be applied to churches.

Because churches are not taxed, many of them get bigger. A lot bigger. In my home town (or "here", as I like to refer to it) one or two churches are larger than the library or the public schools. Granted, more people go to church than to libraries, more's the pity. However, the rooms in the larger churches are mostly empty during the week, used for receptions or small group meetings, or mostly not at all.

I'm moving on toward a point. It was never contemplated that churches would become huge and profit-making enterprises. The intent of excluding them from taxes was so that local communities could have a place to worship indoors and be able to collect enough from weekly gifts to keep it open and functioning. There is nothing the matter with this idea, per se. On the other hand, as citizens, we don't owe churches the opportunity to make a profit, to pay pastors hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, to buy and sell real estate, to compete in the marketplace with those of us who do have to pay taxes.

Why could we not require churches to divest themselves of all properties not having an immediate religious function? Why could we not tax them on ANY income not used in the payment of reasonable salaries and reasonable maintenance? We could exclude taxing excess moneys (what a concept!) that might be given to the poor, sick and needy, and just tax the churches for moneys not used for religious purposes? The Catholic Church is the single richest organization in the world. Isn't that amazing? In Oklahoma the protestant churches are rich and everywhere, with buildings bigger than college campuses.

I'm not interested in being punitive for their greed and anti-religious behaviors. I am interested in their excess profits being taxed like the rest of us.