Bruce D. Baker is a school finance expert at Rutgers University. He writes here that the changing legal status of religious schools opens the door to taxing churches.
He begins:
On June 30th 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that if a state has a program of providing public financing for private entities to provide educational services, that program cannot exclude from participation any institution simply because that institution is religious (see Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue). The decision involved a taxpayer financed tuition tax credit program providing vouchers for children to attend private schools, which under the state’s constitution (Blaine amendment), prohibited use of those vouchers at religious schools. This decision followed an earlier SCOTUS decision that prohibited Missouri from excluding religious institutions from access to a publicly financed program for playground refurbishing. These cases combined reverse a long history of state enforced Blaine Amendments which excluded the use of taxpayer dollars for religious institutions, even where taxpayer dollars were available to other private providers.
Of course, one difficulty with such provisions is having the government play any role in defining what is, or isn’t religion, when determining whether a tax benefit or public financing should be bestowed on an institution. Jedi? Religion! Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Religion!…
If a state cannot exclude from access to taxpayer resources institutions simply because they are religious, a state also cannot exclude from taxation, institutions simply because they are religious. Indeed, to the extent that properties on which private schools operate are exempt, then this exemption would also apply to properties on which private religious schools operate. But the exemption would not extend to the church itself, or for example, rectories, religious retreats or other lands and buildings used solely for “religious” activities, including worship. The state cannot define religious activity in-and-of-itself to qualify as public service because the state should not be in the business of defining “religion,” and bestowing differential benefits on that basis alone.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I totally AGREE! TAX churches. 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽
BINGO
The recent SCREWDUS ruling would only open the door if the SCREWDUS were actually consistent in their rulings.
But since their rulings are not governed by logic and law but by ideology, there is no reason to expect that they will necessarily be consistent.
SCREWDUS: Supreme Court Republicans Enabling Wildly Dysfunctional United States
Can we steal that or is it intellectual property .
Be my guest.
Not incidentally, wouldn’t it first have to be ” intellectual” to be intellectual property?
Maybe the SCREWDUS would like to weigh in on that question.
Brett “I like beer”Kavanaugh is especially qualified to decide.
Brett “I like beer” K. Is especially qualified to decide.
I don’t think taxing churches is a good idea.
It is essential to the Separation of Church and State — Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion — to accord religious institutions no legal status whatsoever. If we grant them enough recognition to tax them, they will simply become more like Corporate Quasi-Persons than they already are and quickly finesse their way out of being taxed like the other Corporate Quasi-Persons we already know and increasingly serve.
What we must endeavor to do instead is rebuild and hold fast the wall between religion and government so long ago setting us apart from the wars and whores of faith in the Old World morass.
We find ourselves in the absurd situation where even attempting to make powerful entities subject to our laws is very likely to have just the opposite effect.
The SCREWDUS
Has screwed us
And glued us
To Brutus
And wooed us
To loot us
To mute us
And boot us
Well, Jon, that’s the first sane argument I’ve encountered for NOT taxing these fraudsters and mythologizers.
I think it was clear to the Founders. The minute the government gets in the business of saying what is and is not a religion it’s all over. Democracy, that is.
It’s interesting to compare Europe, which had so many established religions, to the U.S., which didn’t. A couple major differences stand out: a) religion flourished here (in Europe, the churches are largely empty on Sunday), and b) literally thousands of sects emerged, with differing practices and beliefs.
The Anti-establishment Clause
Despite their Bill of rights
The Founding Fathers’ fears
Were most about the mights
Of churches without peers
Of Catholics with Popes
That reach the distant shore
To squelch the nascent hopes
Of colonies, for sure
In writing Bill of Rights
The Founding Fathers’ fears”
Would be better
I think it was clear to the Founders. The minute the government gets in the business of saying what is and is not a religion it’s all over. ”
The IRS already decides what is and what is not a church for vacation purposes.
So one can make a very good argument that tax breaks for churches violate the establishment clause.
Taxation purposes.
Although they might also define church for vacation purposes.
Essentially, one can make the argument in either direction.
The government also decides what religious practices are permissible with regard to things like illegal drug use.
If a person wanted to start The Church of the Rastafarians whose main practice was smoking pot, I’m pretty sure they would not get IRS tax exempt status — and that they would get shut down by the DEA to boot, especially if they were operating in a state where marijuana was not legal.
The whole thing is very subjective, meaning the government can and already does pretty much decide at will which organizations are churches/religions and which are not.
Or The Church of the Heroine, which did not celebrate a woman but an illegal drug.
Or The Church of the Crystal (which does not worship crystals but Crystal meth)
Conservative church leaders win, they don’t lose when it comes to denying rights to women (and, people of color) and, to getting more tax dollars for their organizations. (Catholic organizations are the 3rd largest U.S. employer.)
The conservative religious leaders rely on tribalism to make it so.
The nation was doomed when, instead of conflict between conservative protestant leaders and American Catholic leaders, they formed an alliance and merged goals with Koch.
Ryan Girdusky’s interview (2014) of Pat Buchan, posted at the Buchanan site tells us, “Catholics are natural Republicans”. Imposing authoritarianism and selling it as “freedom” to the gullible suckers i.e. believers- it was predictable.
This: “Who pays the price for these unlawfully bestowed tax benefits? Other local property owners, who must pay higher taxes to offset the reduced overall tax base, and all other taxpayers in the state where state general funds are used to offset differences in local fiscal capacity. These taxpayers should, simultaneously, across multiple jurisdictions begin to file suit to recover these damages, and mitigate any future damages.”
Amen to that.
Why would a church not be exempt from taxation just as an historical society or a dog shelter? I do not understand this issue, I suppose. Already ministers and paid leaders of the nature conservancy pay taxes on their earnings like any other wage earner. Are we talking about property taxes?
Clergy are not required to pay taxes on housing allowances or on the rental value of parsonages or other housing. That’s a pretty substantial benefit that other folks don’t get. Churches don’t pay taxes on monies they take in–the stuff in the collection plate, gifts, bequests, etc. The televangelist hucksters, for example, pay employees to sit at conveyor belts and open letters full of donations to their “churches,” and they pay no taxes on those donations,, and then they go off to do a little ministering to the pool boys on their private yachts sailing to Cabo San Lucas.
Actually, college presidents, the president of the US, and state governors gets the same benefit(along with higher salaries).
Yes, and adjuncts live in their cars and shower in the phys ed building because they are not paid a living wage.
By providing a financial benefit to churches by exempting them from taxation, the federal government is violating the separation of church and state guaranteed by the Constitution.
That historical society or dog shelter, btw, has to do extensive reporting to the IRS, whereas the church doesn’t have to do so and so operates with complete lack of transparency.
Yes, and the benefit is much bigger for the big churches than it is for the small ones, which effectively favors the bigger churches, which also violates the establishment clause.
Money means power, which means that, by dint of their tax breaks, the big churches can exert more influence on government (which occurs all the time, despite, laws which are supposed to prevent just such political involvement/meddling), which also violates the establishment clause.
Donors to the churches get deductions from income which lowers their taxes.
According special status to the keepers of tribal legends and mythologies is common, past and present, in cultures worldwide.
But this doesn’t mean that it’s constitutional in the United States.
Now that religious institutions are taking money from taxpayers to make a profit providing a (shoddy because of no regulation) service that government and private businesses also provide, those religious institutions have defined themselves as contractors for governments, as businesses. Businesses get taxed. Take voucher money and you are a private company, no matter what you believe. You must owe taxes. Additionally, take voucher money and you are taking public money, giving the government the right to regulate your business and require you to teach science instead of what you believe.
Churches are foolish to take vouchers. They’re setting themselves up for a fall. And greed is a sin, too.
Dear Dr. Baker. All my spiritual wives are a bit miffed that you failed to mention Enlightened Master Bob’s Ayahuasca School for Little Cosmic Voyagers, which cannot wait to get its hands on some of that cash that will flow from Espinoza v. Montana.
I didn’t realize Montana even existed at the time of Spinoza.
And what was (de) Spinoza’s beef with Montana, anyway?
Best baruch I ever read.
My clothes weren’t quite dry, so I put them back in the dryer for another spinoza.
I normally set my washer on the Spinoza cycle to drive out the Abrahams, Isaacs and Jacobs.
Abrahams, Isaacs and Jacob are generally welcome in my home!
The Spinoza cycle drives out “personal” gods (like those of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) so in that sense it is really nondenominational.
How inadequate and weak do conservative church leaders think men are? Invocation of
an ancient patriarchal model is required to bolster them. Females must be denied leadership roles because without handicapping, the likelihood of male success is compromised. Society has to be told that a deity in the sky thinks men are superior and we should all act accordingly. And still, men’s achievements aren’t likely to occur unless women interact with them “sweetly”.
I’ll bet a significant number of women (and men) could achieve without all of that propping up.
Isn’t there a law agains federal contracts for groups that discriminate against protected classes like those that are gender-related? Oh wait, we live in the United States of America and a patriarchal god.
The argument is that priests should be like Jesus. So, in keeping with that, they should ordain only under thirty year old Middle Eastern Jewish men.
I thought God was transgender.
But, if that was true (fill in the correct pronoun) wouldn’t be welcome in the conservative churches…wait… Christ’s teaching are at odds with conservative church practices. The mistake society makes is buying into the PR that churches are the houses of the Lord.
If Conservatives knew that God is a woman (to say nothing of a trans woman) , they would certainly not let her anywhere near their churches.
I guess that means Jesusa is also transgender.
I think you mean Jesa
Ah, Bethree, Jesa, a Life. Now THERE’s a book!
“men’s achievements aren’t likely to occur unless women interact with them “sweetly”.
Some day I suspect that there will be vending machines where the complement of the chromosomes in sperm can be specified in detail , generated and then dispensed to women who will impregnate themselves, completely eliminating the necessity of men for the continuation of the species.
At that point , men’s achievements will become irrelevan, as will men.
Then again, robots may take over the planet before that happens making both men AND women irrelevant (if not nonexistent)
Either way, men are doomed.
Some serious psychological sickness-
Men of the cloth tell heterosexual men that they must accept the pregnancies that come with sex. Then, some of those same men have sex with other men and boys knowing that they will have no similar consequence.
Predicted, SomeDAM, by Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex in 1949!
Burnt Moths
Men of the Cloth
With ken of the moth
Flying round flame
A dangerous game
Well worth the read, an article at La Civilta Cattolica 2/21, written by Antonio Spadaro, SJ, Church Life. It’s about the current condemnation of traditional ecumenism in favor of “promoting an ecumenism of conflict that unites evangelicals and some Catholics in the nostalgic dream of a theocratic type of state.”
The article’s title, “Evangelical fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism”
!!!!!
The article’s author is described as close to Pope Francis which indicates Spadaro may be expressing Pope Francis’ view- a concern about the number of Catholics promoting Christian nationalism,
It might be interesting to know if the Pope feels he is at the helm of a ship of piracy or the Titanic.
Or The Ship of Pedophilia