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Comment by Findeton | Hacker News Reader

I would be happy if churches had exactly the same status as any other business. Nothing less, nothing more.

It is often the case that they do. For example, the church that I attend bought adjacent property to keep as vacant open space.. but since there is no church on the land, the church pays property tax on it just like any other non tax exempt entity would. Kind of ironic since if it were farmland deemed open space it would be a different story in most places. Our tax code is not perfect but the path forward is to look at it in totality... the minute you try to solve one problem here, you’ll create a dozen there. Churches are global organizations... I’m sure it wouldn’t take much thinking, painful as it may be, for the Mormons to decide to hold their wealth outside of the US should our tax policies become unsustainable for them. Just because it’s a large number doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

> Our tax code is not perfect but the path forward is to look at it in totality... the minute you try to solve one problem here, you’ll create a dozen there.

Not really. Remove all exemption, deductions, credits, and special treatments.

Generally I’m with you but in the case of religion, I think it’s a bad idea to tax one’s belief in God. The key issue here is the state isn’t supreme... just because there is untaxed wealth doesn’t mean it automatically belongs to the government... especially if we believe in separation of church and state.

> Generally I’m with you but in the case of religion, I think it’s a bad idea to tax one’s belief in God.

What's the taxable income or capital gains of a belief, exactly?

Not providing an exemption for donations is not taxing one’s beliefs.

So I guess we shouldn’t provide military service exemptions to conscientious objectors either. You either have separation of church and state or you don’t. As a practical matter I’m unaware of any church organization even the Mormons who are ‘killing’ it with the exemption. Very few people give 1% of their income to their church much less a full tithe or anything more than tithe despite the favorable tax treatment. I submit you’re angry about organized religion, the size of the investment fund or both... but neither are a justification to change separation of church and state.

I’m not angry about organized religion and tax rules specifically. I just know that the more complicated the rules get, the more they get exploited.

Off topic, but I would also support mandatory service in military for all similar to Israel. I can’t think of any other way to make people care about their country’s actions.

It's very easy to incorporate different types of businesses under tax exempt nonprofits under codes that are not 501(c)3. The problem is if you are not incorporated as a nonprofit, if someday you flip to losing money because you're giving it away, the irs will not be happy, and may move to revoke your incorporation.

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