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Comment by emteycz | Hacker News Reader

If Nazism is illegal, so should be Catholicism and other religions. Either go full freedom of speech/thought or not, no in betweens. The amount of suffering Catholicism and Christianity in general has caused is probably comparable to Nazism anyways.

To me, it's selling lies to vulnerable people; and not just that, it's lies that not only steal money, but directly make the lives (especially its mental side) of these people and their families including (especially!) children considerably worse. Despicable, way worse than selling shit vacuum cleaners or life insurance.

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While I personally agree that religion overall has a major negative impact on society, and has throughout history, I still don't think they should be made illegal or regulated. People can believe what they want to believe, and trying to control thoughts and ideologies is absolutely not something I would ever support. It would set an incredibly dangerous precedent

They should at least pay taxes just like anybody else, but most countries don't even have that.

Yes, I agree that religions should have to pay taxes. When I said regulate, I meant regulating peoples right to practice

Tax laws vary from country to country and even within countries, but it is possible to exempt religious groups from taxation without giving them special treatment, simply by applying the principle that non-profit groups aren't taxed. So, the local church doesn't pay taxes, but the neighbourhood sports club doesn't pay taxes either, since both are non-profit entities.

Yeah no, after the billions the catholic church has nobody can claim with a straight-face they are a non-profit.

What about your local synagogue or mosque, how many billions do they have? What about some small non-denominational Christian church, how much have they got?

Even with the Catholic Church, sure the Vatican has billions in the bank, the parish around the corner definitely doesn't.

Last time I went around the local church, they still had a lot of gold on the building

> Yeah no, after the billions the catholic church has nobody can claim with a straight-face they are a non-profit.

"Non-profit" doesn't mean "doesn't have significant assets", it means "doesn't have shareholders or similar stakeholders with a claim on assets". (It is about not returning a profit to someone else, not about not making profits.)

But they do spend the money on vacations and houses and such, why does that not count as return of profit?

Reasonable salaries, benefits and expenses to employees are not classified as a profit distribution. Providing residential accomodation to employees is a fringe benefit. Even providing employees with vacations is a fringe benefit, not a profit distribution.

My brother-in-law works in the construction supply industry. He isn't an owner or stockholder of his employer, he is just one of many non-managerial employees. His employer owns a holiday home and allows the employees to use it for vacation. (They have to apply in advance, and there is some system worked out on how to share it out – I think there is a waiting list, and also more senior people may get some priority.) When he takes his family on vacation to that holiday home, it is not a "return of profit", it is an employee benefit.

When the company buys the house you live in is that an employee benefit? Really, is just playing fool pretending getting everything in your life paid is "just a benefit" and not a profit, that getting everything in your life sorted out is exactly what profiteers do with profit anyways.

An organisation providing its employees with residential accomodation is not unheard of, and not at all specific to religion. It is common for governments to provide housing to senior officials (head of state or government, senior ministers, etc) and ambassadors. That doesn't make those governments for-profit, and the President/Prime Minister/Ambassador/etc is not a stockholder/owner of the government receiving a profit distribution from it.

Historically, even relatively junior employees were often provided with accomodation. One of my favourite examples is a couple of unusual residences in Sydney, Australia, which are houses built into sewer vents [1], [2]. The government-owned water utility built these residences for the sewer workers who maintained the vents to live in (along with their families). That didn't make these sewer workers somehow recipients of a "profit distribution", nor did it make the government-owned water utility a "for-profit". (The houses still exist, but are now sold or rented-out to non-employees, since providing employees with residential accomodation is far less common than it used to be–and the sewer vents are still in use to ventilate the main sewers that run beneath them.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corunna_Road_Sewer_Vent_and_Co...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premier_Street_Sewer_Vent_and_...

In this case such "employees" are also the ones deciding who is gonna keep running the organization for the next generation (therfor enjoying the exact same benefits); all in all is just a for-profit doing a lot of lawyering play to call themselves a non-profit, a non-profit should be exclusively a term for organizations that barely survive month-to-month, if you are amassing billions you aren't that.

> When the company buys the house you live in is that an employee benefit?

Yes, when the company owns it and keeps the house (potentially assigning it to your successor) when you leave the position, absolutely.

You forgot the option when it's tax fraud

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