Re:Mormon whistleblower says is his church is a “clandestine...
by maxsilver on Monday May 15, 2023 @09:59AM
(#35948232)
> So if the tax breaks are stopped, will the church organization cover the new difference, or lose the ministers?
Killing the housing benefit (for example) would mostly just hurt small churches following the rules. Big churches breaking the rules, already have other loopholes they can use. (In theory, any church could use those other loopholes, but in practice, only large churches have enough cash-on-hand to afford to exploit them)
And that's before getting to the fact that big churches can also just break the rules, no one holds them accountable anyway, and it's a political poison-pill for most politicians to try to encourage enforcement.
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If you really want to clean up the issue, I'd leave church tax credits around housing alone, but go after endowments. Endowments (imho) should never be allowed to be tax-free, all endowment payouts should be subject to taxation (regardless of the non-profit status of who/what holds them). It also is way easier to enforce a rule like that.
However, so many non-profits use endowments to claim non-profit status (in theory) while still generating high profits (in practice) that no one is likely to ever touch them. The Mormon church isn't unique in that regard, the majority of financial tricks they're using here are ones that Harvard University (as one random example) is also using.
Killing the housing benefit (for example) would mostly just hurt small churches following the rules. Big churches breaking the rules, already have other loopholes they can use. (In theory, any church could use those other loopholes, but in practice, only large churches have enough cash-on-hand to afford to exploit them)
And that's before getting to the fact that big churches can also just break the rules, no one holds them accountable anyway, and it's a political poison-pill for most politicians to try to encourage enforcement.
--
If you really want to clean up the issue, I'd leave church tax credits around housing alone, but go after endowments. Endowments (imho) should never be allowed to be tax-free, all endowment payouts should be subject to taxation (regardless of the non-profit status of who/what holds them). It also is way easier to enforce a rule like that.
However, so many non-profits use endowments to claim non-profit status (in theory) while still generating high profits (in practice) that no one is likely to ever touch them. The Mormon church isn't unique in that regard, the majority of financial tricks they're using here are ones that Harvard University (as one random example) is also using.