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'We the People' Petition To Revoke Scientology's Tax Exempt Status
An anonymous reader writes: There has been a lot of interest in the activities of the Church of Scientology recently, especially since the release of Alex Gibney's documentary Going Clear. A petition against tax-exempt status for Scientology has been started on the U.S. White House petition website. If it receives more than 100,000 signatures, it will qualify for an official White House response. Even Slashdot has had its own run-ins with Scientology in the past — one of many internet sites to face legal threats from the Church. Has the time come for Scientology go "clear?"
Okay, they got the Nazi thing wrong. But they definitely got the Scientology thing RIGHT.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Not just Scientologism. Shouldn't we be reexamining all tax exempt organizations that promote a religious belief as their sole claim to tax exempt? Run a soup kitchen, great, soup kitchen is tax exempt. Run an empire with a soup kitchen, the empire should not be tax exempt- true for scientologists and Christians.
I would be ok with removing all tax exempt statuses from churches as long as charity work was deductible for them. We could then see which churches really do put their money where their mouth is in charitable work and donations. It would also encourage any religions which don't put much effort in helping the poor to change that behavior rather quickly.
I have a lot of experience with the We the People petitions. Specifically, how they don't work like people think they do.
How people think it works: You gather enough signatures and then somehow, you introduce bills to congress with your stated goal
How it actually works: A white house rep sends you a generically worded statement about how in this case, the IRS is the agency in control of determining tax exempt status of the church.
There have been dozens of petitions for Westburough baptist church and Scientology and they always get the same response. "I have no control over this".
I'm a Christian, and I would prefer that there is no such thing as a 'religious' exemption from taxation. To me, that's contrary to the constitutional separation of church and state and is an example of the state's recognition of religion (if not the establishment of an official religion, of course).
No, simply churches should have to file as non-profits, and hew to the rules (including auditing, etc) therefor. If they do, great. If they don't, too bad.
-Styopa
Show me another religion that hides their religious texts behind the concept of "trade secrets".
I mean, I can go to pretty much any church and read a Bible. Heck, I can buy a copy at practically any bookstore. Same with the Qur'an. Or the Torah.
I can have religious discussions with Christians (of varying denominations) or Muslims or Jews and find out pretty much anything I want to know about their religion and it doesn't cost me anything other than time.
You want to officially learn about Scientology? Start forking over the cash. (Yes, officially. According to the Church of Scientology, practicing Scientology outside of the auspices of the CoS is bad, mmkay? Not even the Pope tries to insist that you can't be a real Christian unless you're Catholic.)
A lot of that stuff that we know about the Church of Scientology... like Xenu, and the Galactic Confederation, and all that (from the OT III docs)? We're not supposed to know that. We only know about it because of civil trials involving the CoS, and they tried to suppress that stuff under the concept of it being trade secrets.
So yeah, show me another religion that has trade secrets. Where's that other major religion that you don't learn the 'true faith' until and unless you've invested a substantial whack of cash?
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
The question, I believe, is whether the CoS really is a belief organization, or a financial scam.
False dichotomy. Why can't it be both? All belief organizations are financial scams, at least to unbelievers. All financial scams require some degree of faith from their victims.
The question, I believe, is whether the CoS really is a belief organization, or a financial scam.
Cost of reading the most sacred beliefs of all major religions: free online, or $10 for the paperback. Jedi may also need to invest in the DVDs.
Cost of reading the most sacred beliefs of CoS: $380,000 (2006 pricing: http://www.xenu.net/archive/pr... ). Discounts available by signing a billion year contract and working full time in return for food.
This just goes to show the dangers of relying on your own perception when it comes to issues like this. You can download a list of entities which lost their tax exempt status from the IRS themselves, which I am doing now, and (for those who automatically lose their status) it's a 20MB ZIP file containing text, so you can imagine how many records it contains. If their servers weren't so slow from over here I'd give you a precise number.
Don't trust that you know everything - double check you've not fooled yourself or been fooled by someone else. That has two benefits: You learn, and you decrease the chances of looking foolish.
Well, the N.F.L., N.H.L., P.G.A. and L.G.P.A are tax exempt
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfor...
It would be nice to see a petition that instead makes a cogent, fact-based, reasoned argument against the COS's legal eligibility for tax-exempt status, rather than a rant consisting of a bunch of unproven allegations, unspecified accusations of government corruption that sound like they come from conspiracy nuts, some borderline libel, with a couple facts thrown in. It wouldn't be that difficult to do, and it might actually make it awkward for the White House to dismiss, rather than making it easy by inviting them to defend their tax status as an example of how the U.S. defends "oppressed" religions.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Why should charity be deductible, for churches or anyone?
Because the point of government is to support the general welfare of the population, and that's what taxes are supposed to be for. If you're doing your share of social support directly, it's rather unfair to also require you to contribute the full amount to the government pool.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I was agreeing with the thread until this point.
Here's the problem with your statement:
"prime real estate" got that way over a very long time. In the downtown parts of pretty much every major city, those churches were built long ago, when the land was essentially considered unsuitable for anything else (for commerce, farming, industry etc). Many of these places have, over time, become part church, part museum, part heritage - for both its congregation *and* the city it sits in.
Bringing down crushing property taxes on such places would eventually force any religion out of a downtown area, as it almost does for private residents now. It's bad enough that most downtown areas have pushed out anything except for ultra-wealthy corporate and private interests... if it weren't for tax exemption, the museums, churches, libraries, and most other public edifices would have been driven out of the city long ago. Now you want to start eroding that? Sure, you may say it would stop there, but fact is, it won't... someone else will find another reason to start relocating museums out to the 'burbs in order to free up uber-profitable land, then someone else entirely will start whining that big-assed libraries full of paper books on "prime real estate" are totally unnecessary in this digital age, so maybe we should just, you know...
For every "palatial manor" your proposal would dismantle, at least 2-3 small rectory houses, convents/monasteries, strip-mall-churches, *schools*, etc would be forced on the auction block, or funds would be diverted from actual charitable efforts just to pay the property tax bill (money is fungible that way). Note that I haven't even come near bringing up all the religious-run hospitals in the nation and the impact on them (there's a whole lot more than you think - enough that their absence would cripple healthcare rather harshly nation-wide.)
TL;DR - This thing is a bit more complex than you might realize, given the blanket statement. Find a better way
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?