Buttigieg pushes back on O'Rourke threat to strip religious institutions of tax-exempt status

From The Hill-

2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg (D) on Sunday took aim at former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Texas) for saying that religious institutions should lose their tax-exempt status if they oppose same-sex marriage, arguing the policy would only "deepen the divisions we’re already experiencing."

"I agree that anti-discrimination law ought to be applied to all institutions. But the idea that you’re going to strip churches of their tax exempt status if they haven’t found their way towards blessing same-sex marriage, I’m not sure [O'Rourke] understood the implications of what he was saying," Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., said on CNN's "State of The Union" while discussing comments O'Rourke made during the network's LGBT town hall.

More here-

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/465599-buttigieg-pushes-back-on-orourke-call-to-strip-anti-lgbt-religious

Republicans are taxing churches to help corporations. Really.

From The Washington Post-

Republicans tax churches to help pay for big corporate giveaway.

You would be forgiven for thinking this is a headline from the Onion or the fantasy of some left-wing website. But it’s exactly what happened in the big corporate tax cut the GOP passed last year.

Now — under pressure from churches, synagogues and other nonprofits — embarrassed leaders of a party that casts itself as religious liberty’s last line of defense are trying to fix a provision that is a monument to both their carelessness and their hypocrisy.

The authors of the measure apparently didn’t even understand what they were doing — or that’s their alibi to faith groups now. It’s not much of a defense. And the fact that Republicans increased the tax burden on nonprofits, including those tied to religion, so they could shower money on corporations and the wealthy shows where their priorities lie.

More here-

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/republicans-are-taxing-churches-to-help-corporations-really/2018/12/05/4fd0fbc6-f4f7-11e8-bc79-68604ed88993_story.html?fbclid=IwAR3wkZbkwjqlbRFJDcy0kOR5YwCWoq-mPFlkwvdDiTP-WRdhhyu1hiw9SqY&utm_term=.c52002116be2

Brady proposing to kill new tax on churches, colleges, other nonprofits

From Politico-

House Republicans are proposing to rescind a new tax they imposed on churches and other nonprofits.

Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) has introduced an amendment to a pending tax bill that would eliminate a new tax on certain fringe benefits provided to employees of nonprofits.

“We are proactively eliminating any potential uncertainty for our churches and community organizations so nothing distracts them from their core mission,” said Brady.

The levy, created as part of last year’s tax overhaul has outraged religious groups, who complain it will force them to pay taxes for the first time. Killing the tax would cost $1.8 billion, according to Congress’ nonpartisan budget scorekeepers.

Republicans want to delete the charge as part of a year-end tax bill they hope to get to President Donald Trump’s desk before Congress quits for the year.

More here-

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/29/brady-to-kill-new-tax-nonprofits-998142

Welby proposes radical tax reforms

From The Church Times-

BIBLE verses are not normally traded at press conferences, but there was a sharp exchange on Wednesday, when the Archbishop of Canterbury launched a radical set of proposals to reform the UK economy.

The proposals are contained in Prosperity and Justice, a report produced by the Institute for Public Policy and Research (IPPR) Commission on Economic Justice, of which Archbishop Welby is a member. The report’s premise is that wealthy individuals and corporations must contribute more to ensure a just society.

“Isn’t there a risk that, if the Government were to impose a wealth tax, particularly on earnings that people had already paid tax on, they would fall foul of the eighth commandment: ‘Thou shalt not steal’?” Sky’s economics editor, Ed Conway, asked.

More here-

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/7-september/news/uk/welby-proposes-radical-tax-reforms 

and here-

https://www.ft.com/content/268ff106-b1f7-11e8-99ca-68cf89602132

Christian leaders in US oppose plan to tax church-owned property in Jerusalem

From CWR-

Prominent Christian leaders in America co-signed a letter Tuesday to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat asking them to reconsider a proposed plan to tax church-owned properties in the city.

Currently, properties owned by churches are not taxed.

In the March 13 letter, the leaders warned that the policies would “severely inhibit” the work of the churches in and around Jerusalem, and would disrupt the Status Quo policy.

“If enacted, these measures would have the effect of creating a situation that jeopardizes the very survival of the Christian community in the Holy Land,” they said.

The letter was signed by Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops; Archbishop Vicken Aykazian of the Armenian Apostolic Church; Elizabeth Eaton, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; and Michael Curry, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.

More here-

http://www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/03/14/christian-leaders-in-us-oppose-plan-to-tax-church-owned-property-in-jerusalem/

Jerusalem Christians Unite ... to Close Church of the Holy Sepulchre

From Christianity Today

In an action not seen in more than a century, the leaders of Jerusalem’s churches closed the doors of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Sunday in a show of united protest. The dramatic decision comes in response to moves by Jerusalem authorities to begin collecting tens of millions of dollars in taxes from churches, as well as proposed legislation to confiscate church-owned land.

The Anglican Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem said the new tax threatened its ability to maintain its many social care initiatives in the city, along with its numerous schools, training centers, and health care facilities. Likewise, the Vatican’s Notre Dame of Jerusalem hotel, restaurant, and conference center (among many other such enterprises) are set to face fines, stretching the Roman Catholic Church’s resources in the ancient city.

More here-

http://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2018/february/jerusalem-church-of-holy-sepulchre-closed-taxes-arnona.html

and here-

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/jerusalem-s-church-of-holy-sepulchre-closed-indefinitely-in-protest-of-israeli-bill-city-tax-policy-1.5847184

and here-

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/sacred-jerusalem-church-shuttered-in-dispute-with-israeli-authorities/2018/02/25/f6e05fd4-1a31-11e8-9de1-147dd2df3829_story.html?utm_term=.2ffd87b21877

This tax plan is a grotesque insult to the Christian faith

From Daily News-

As Christians prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus, lawmakers on Capitol Hill who talk a big game about their faith passed a morally grotesque tax bill that makes a mockery of Christian values. Republican leaders in Washington have long worshiped at the altar of free-market fundamentalism — and reverently recite the dubious creed of trickle-down economics — but this gaudy handout to the rich is a festival of greed that will deepen already scandalous levels of inequality.

If the last will be first in God's kingdom, tax policy written by and for corporate lobbyists and members of Congress who will be enriched by their own legislative handiwork ensures that the privileged few are once again favored over the common good.

More here-

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/tax-plan-grotesque-insult-christian-faith-article-1.3709578

CLERGY MAY SOON FIND TAXES SOARING AS RESULT OF AN UNDER-THE-RADAR RULING

From Religion Dispatches-

Relatively little fanfare accompanied U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb’s ruling in October that a tax exemption for clergy housing dating back to 1954 violates the First Amendment. Crabb confirmed her ruling in the case Gaylor v. Mnuchin this past Wednesday, declaring unconstitutional a provision of the tax code that’s made it possible for clergy to enjoy higher standards of living than their salaries might suggest.

At issue is section 107 of the U.S. Tax Code, which contains two subsections pertaining to “the case of a minister of the gospel.” (The term was originally intended to refer only to ordained Christian clergy, but its meaning was later expanded by the Internal Revenue Service to include their counterparts in other religious traditions.) The first subsection, 107(1), allows a minister to exclude from taxable income the value of a living space that’s considered “part of his compensation,” while the second, 107(2), permits the exclusion of “the rental allowance paid to him” for a living space. This second subsection, wherein the employer provides the money rather than the space itself, is the one that Crabb found unconstitutional.

More here-

http://religiondispatches.org/clergy-may-soon-find-taxes-soaring-as-result-of-an-under-the-radar-ruling/

Effort to allow partisan politics in church reaches dead end

From Fox-

A provision that would have freed churches to make political endorsements has been dropped from the Republican tax overhaul, dashing the hopes of a segment of religious conservatives on what has been a key issue to the Trump administration.

Advocacy groups on opposing sides said Friday they expect lawmakers to keep trying to loosen rules over partisanship in the pulpit, even as this latest effort has reached a dead end.

Conservative groups such as the Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending Freedom have for years sought to abolish IRS rules that bar electioneering by houses of worship and other charitable groups. President Donald Trump pressed the fight on the campaign trail and in the White House.


Still, only Congress has the authority to repeal the restriction known as the Johnson Amendment. It was named for President Lyndon Johnson, who introduced the measure in 1954 when he was a Democratic senator from Texas upset about a few nonprofit groups that had attacked him as a communist during a Senate race.
More here-

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/12/15/effort-to-allow-partisan-politics-in-church-reaches-dead-end.html

A new Poor People’s Campaign wants to change how society defines morality

From The Washington Post-

Fifty years ago this week, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference announced the Poor People’s Campaign. Calling for a cross-racial coalition of Americans living in poverty to demand better living conditions, King described the need for the campaign in terms that feel particularly timely in the Trump era. “All of us can feel the presence of a kind of social insanity which could lead us to national ruin,” King declared.

Half a century later, as Republican leaders ram through a ruinous tax bill that will exacerbate economic inequality, a coalition of faith and social justice organizations is bringing King’s vision into the 21st century. Led by Rev. William J. Barber II and Rev. Liz Theoharis, the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is planning 40 days of coordinated action in the spring of 2018 at statehouses across the country. Like its predecessor, the modern Poor People’s Campaign is focused on what King described as the “triple evils” of racism, poverty and militarism — with the addition of ecological devastation, a global crisis that disproportionately affects people living in poverty.


More here-

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-new-poor-peoples-campaign-wants-to-change-how-society-defines-morality/2017/12/05/d4524b68-d90d-11e7-b1a8-62589434a581_story.html?utm_term=.f9a4b7e975b2

Federal judge rules clergy housing tax exemption unconstitutional (again)

From The Cafe-

A renewed lawsuit challenging the income tax break on clergy housing allowances (sometimes called the parsonage exemption) has been upheld by the same federal district judge who ruled the law unconstitutional in 2013.

As members of clergy and their Vestries know, a portion of a minister of religion’s compensation package may be designated as housing allowance, and exempted from income taxes (although not from the minister’s self-employment taxes). Find a helpful background to the housing allowance exemption here.

US District Judge Barbara Crabb ruled in 2013, and again in Wisconsin on Friday, that the provision is unconstitutional because it provides a benefit to some people but not to others. Her 2013 ruling was reversed on appeal, but the Freedom from Religion Foundation believes that it has the grounds for that reversal covered this time around.

More here-

https://www.episcopalcafe.com/federal-judge-rules-clergy-housing-tax-exemption-unconstitutional-again/

Federal judge strikes down housing allowance for clergy

From Crux Now-

A federal judge in Wisconsin has struck down as unconstitutional a law that gives clergy tax-free housing allowances, in a ruling that could have far-reaching ramifications for religious leaders, who could be facing new taxes which will threaten their ministry.

Under the federal law passed in 1954, a “minister of the gospel” doesn’t pay income taxes on compensation that is designated part of a housing allowance. The Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, argued that the law discriminates against secular employees.
The benefit saves clergy, including non-Christian religious leaders, $800 million a year in taxes, according to the latest estimate from the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

Under the law, housing allowances paid as part of clergy salary can be subtracted from their taxable income.

More here-

https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2017/10/09/federal-judge-strikes-housing-allowance-clergy/

Montreal Is Taxing Churches

From Patheos-

No more religious exemptions, Montreal is taxing churches: For the first time churches in Montreal are being forced to pay taxes, and some church leaders are very unhappy.

CTV Montreal reports that churches and church space not being used explicitly for the purpose of worship is now taxable property, and is to be treated as any other property as far as taxes are concerned.

As one might expect, those benefitting from the tax exempt status enjoyed by churches are not happy. Again, CTV Montreal reports:

Joel Coppetiers, the Minister at the Cote des Neiges Presbyterian church, was shocked when his institution first received a municipal tax bill…

“The indication is there’s not an exemption for the church as a whole, there’s only an exemption for those areas used for public worship and things directly related to it,” said Coppetiers.

More here-

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2017/05/good-news-montreal-taxing-churches/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=BRSS&utm_campaign=Nonreligious&utm_content=367

Small Rectories Imperiled

From The Living Church-

Small congregations and their clergy would be hit hardest if high courts affirm a landmark November ruling that deemed clergy housing allowances and their unique tax benefits unconstitutional.

That’s according to Thomas Moore III, executive director of the Society for the Increase of the Ministry, a Hartford-based organization that raises money for Episcopal seminarian scholarships.

“The fact that that [a housing] allowance has favorable tax treatment for a profession that pays modestly is a huge benefit” that most clergy utilize, Moore said. If that benefit goes away, he added, “it will definitely have an effect.”

Moore offered thoughts in the wake of a ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin in a case brought from the Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation. The ruling could be appealed to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and eventually to the U.S. Supreme Court.

More here-

http://www.livingchurch.org/small-rectories-imperiled

Many German Christians quit church to avoid tax

From Market Place NPR-

In his chic, modern apartment in the former East Berlin, Stefan Faulstroh wants to know what tea I want so he can select the appropriate water temperature. He’s an engineer. You wouldn’t have guessed. Makes trains. I wouldn’t want to be so crass as to ask how much he earns but judging by the look of his place, it’s quite a lot. Stefan, though, no longer pays the church tax that used to gobble up four percent of his salary.

Was it really the money, I ask. Or was it loss of faith? No, he says, it was the money. “So now do you sometimes sneak into church nevertheless? At Christmas maybe, or Easter?” Yes, he says, as a matter of fact he does. “Does he feel guilty?” He puts the question for me. “Not really.” But sometimes he wonders if he shouldn’t go back and become a church member again. “Obviously, when you die, no priest is going to come to your funeral so that’s a downside but that’s a few years from now.”

Tall, impressively bald and dressed in a striking tweed suit he says he bought in a church bazaar, Pastor Johann Hinrich Claussen, Dean of the Hamburg region, says he keeps an eye out for tax dodgers. Especially wealthy tax dodgers. And gives me a piercing look as if I might be one myself.

The figures, he agrees, are worrying. Christians -- Protestants and Catholics combined -- are leaving their churches at a rate of about 300,000 people a year. That is a shame in itself but it also means a drop in income. So his church is trying to diversify its revenues in order to keep maintaining its churches and paying its ministers, deacons and so on. But, he says, Germany should keep its church tax.

“Social-Democrats and Liberals invented this tax a hundred years ago in order to make the people pay for their church, not only the patrons or the king or the Kaiser,” he says. “It was invented to democratize the church. That’s still an old and I think good idea.”
More here-



http://www.marketplace.org/topics/world/many-german-christians-quit-church-avoid-tax

Before Senate vote, national religious leaders call GOP budget cuts ‘immoral’

From Florida-

As the U.S. Senate gets ready to vote today on the recently approved House GOP budget, a handful of religious leaders from various denominations have spoken out against the budget because it “contains immoral cuts that would harm the most vulnerable.”

Catholic leaders, two dozen bishops of the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the United Methodist Church as well as members of the 100,000-plus online community Faithful America have issued letters and petitions stating that the budget lacks compassion and is an affront to Christian values.

The Protestant Bishops’ letter (pdf.) urges senators voting on the House budget proposal “to consider the human costs of massive cuts to social programs and come together across partisan lines to shape a budget that defends human dignity and basic economic security for all Americans.”

The letter questions the cuts to nutrition programs for mothers and infants (Women, Infants and Children) and cuts to Medicaid that “will hurt sick children, struggling families and seniors in nursing homes. Proposed changes to Medicare will break the promise that all American seniors get the healthcare they need by forcing them to buy private insurance without assuring that it is affordable.”

More here-

http://floridaindependent.com/31464/senate-budget-paul-ryan-immoral

Tax the Church? In Spain, it Saves the Govt Billions

From Life site-

As liberal groups continue to push governments to tax Christian churches, data recently published by the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE) found that the Catholic Church actually saves the Spanish government billions of dollars per year in social service expenditures.

The Catholic Church receives approximately 252.7 million euros per year ($311.8m) from voluntary taxpayer contributions, coming from only 7.2 million taxpayers who check a box indicating that they wish 0.7% of their tax to go to the Catholic Church, rather than to a government fund. The rest of its income is through private donations.

However, the Catholic bishops contend that taxpayers realize a massive return for their investment, resulting in billions of euros in savings from social programs and other services that would have cost much more if they had been left to the private sector.

Fernando Gimenez Barriocanal, vice secretary of Economic Affairs for the CEE, says that "the Church is at the disposition of society, and gives much much more than what it receives...each euro invested in the Church returns to the society multiplied 2.73 times."

The "immense labor of assistance" by the Catholic Church in Spain involves 20,000 priests, more than 70,000 pastoral assistants and more than 60,000 volunteers, according to Gimenez Barriocanal.

The Church spends approximately 2.8 billion euros per year on assistance programs, including 68 women's shelters to aid victims of spousal abuse and ex-prostitutes, and 870,000 poor who are clothed and fed by Catholics. In toto, 2.8 million people receive such benefits from the Catholic Church.

In addition, the Catholic Church in Spain provides educational services to almost 1.4 million students, saving the government more than 4.1 billion euros annually.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jun/10062113.html