Church Exemptions Imply Churches Benefit Society Merely by Existing
Many churches – too many – are taking advantage of the system, using tax exemptions for selfish or even antisocial goals (e.g., Branch Davidians, the “Holy Land” terrorist front, Scientology, and multi-millionaire televangelists).
The fact is that a church is just another kind of club, but it gets special treatment because the club preaches about a mythology or religion (same thing). In order for any other club to gain tax-exempt status, they must adhere to rules and regulations, declare their income, and prove their worth to society as a whole. Religious clubs get treated differently ONLY because they talk about religion, instead of stamp collecting or today’s best-selling books. This is clearly illegal, and it’s clearly wrong.
It’s illegal because it offers benefits to religious institutions but not to their secular counterparts; it’s wrong because it assumes that every religious institution benefits society by merely existing. Churches need not perform any service at all in order to get these massive exemptions; they merely need to declare themselves religious to be tax-free.
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This is no church , but a corporate cult. Every bit of money they charge for their enlightenment and anything else they offer (NONE of it is free) is all pure tax-free profit. Where does the money go? Most of it goes straight into David Miscavige's pocket. I am not clear on just how how much $cientology is worth, but if it is eradicated like all other major cults and it's assets seized, our war-debt can be lessened greatly. If the Cult continues to "Fair Game Policy" it's critics, then it will be eradicated someday soon.
However, what if it were merely taxed like a corporation? It sure seems to act more like one rather than a religion , so why not tax it? The fact that their "religious" services cost exorbitant amounts of money lends creidence to my claim of the organisation being a "Corporate cult"
By the way, has anyone heard that they have recentrly purchased a California-class Submarine? Now, I wonder what they plan to do with that....
Churches are exempt because the framers of the Constitution were concerned about endorsement of ANY religion by the federal government. There were state-endorsed religions (not federal, state) for about a hundred years in the US after the Constitution was ratified.
But since you seem concerned about whether society benefits, here's one, which the churches manage to accomplish between passing the collection plate and social events.
http://www.aypf.org/publications/DoesReligiousParticipation.pdf
"For the full sample of adolescents, most forms of religious participation make a modest contribution to the likelihood of on-time graduation, although there are some exceptions. Adolescents who participated in some religious activity at some point were 6.6% more likely to graduate on time than were adolescents who never participated in any religious activities. Consistency (participating in at least one religious activity each year) provides
a boost of 47.1% over youth who never participated. The biggest gains are associated with attending religious classes outside of school in 8th grade (30.9% increase), participating in a religious organization at school in 8th grade (23.9% increase), and engaging in some religious activity in 10th grade (19.7% increase).
…The biggest impact comes in 10th grade, when religious participation
is associated with a 60.0% greater likelihood of on-time graduation, compared to adolescents who did not participate in 10th grade."
Now, this doesn't make as big a difference as actually being good at school, participating in sports , or belonging to extra-curricular clubs. My tax dollars pay for sports activities and extra-curricular clubs, and of course pay for teachers to foster that academic talent.
Can this claim be substantiated? At most churches, the "services" provided are sermons to members, prayer meetings for members, sometimes social events for members, and then asking for donations from members. How is this different, in principle, from a movie theater? Movie theaters don't get tax exempt, but public goods organizations do because they (presumably) have some benefit to NON-members, that is, society at large. Each individual church must be required to prove its value as a tax-exempt institution, not given a de facto exemption only to be lost for grievous misconduct. The implicit assumption is that all churches are good for society, where all secular institutions must justify their public value on the implicit assumption that they do not perform similar goods. In what way this does not unfairly prioritize religious affiliation over religious non-affiliation is completely lost on me.