Appeals court upholds federal tax exemption for clergy housing expenses

From ENS-

In the latest installment in a nearly decade-long effort to have the Internal Revenue Service’s clergy parsonage exemption declared unconstitutional, the federal Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled just the opposite.

A three-judge panel said March 15 that the principal effect of the tax exemption is “neither to endorse nor to inhibit religion, and it does not cause excessive government entanglement.”

Seventh Circuit Judge Michael B. Brennan, writing for the unanimous panel, said “any financial interaction between religion and government — like taxing a church, or exempting it from tax — entails some degree of entanglement.” But, he wrote, only “excessive entanglement” violates the U.S. Constitution’s Establishment Clause. The clause in the First Amendment prohibits the government from establishing an official religion, unduly favoring one religion over another, favoring religion over non-religion or vice versa.

More here-

https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2019/03/18/appeals-court-upholds-federal-tax-exemption-for-clergy-housing-expenses/