• FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    And this, folks, is why we should tax religious organizations…. Like every other country I know of. (edit, apparently I knew less than I thought I did. I think what I did was conflate a ‘church tax’ with churches paying income tax. apparently that’s a thing where the state collects your tithe for you… if you attend or whatever.)

      • Tyfud@lemmy.one
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        8 months ago

        A long time ago, it was so that they could use the additional resources for helping the needy and less fortunate instead of the government. The idea being a Church was a community organization and would know better than the government what the community needed.

        In order to get the tax credit, the church agreed to never get involved politically with anything.

        Fast forward to now, and churches are violating that agreement in a big way

        Now they deserve to be taxed.

        • BabyWah@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Thanks, I forgot about the background completely. I agree, be it a mosque, synagogue, church, … tax them all.

          If they make money, they should pay, like everyone else.

          • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            they can deduct actual charitable contributions, for things like running a soup kitchen, and stuff. but that’s subject to auditing, and not at all allowed to go into ‘charitable funds’ that dish out to the board members.

        • Thorry84@feddit.nl
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          8 months ago

          There is actually more history behind it. Back in the days when the local king would collect taxes from his subjects, churches wouldn’t have to pay. This was because taking money from the church was considered a sin. Whilst donating to the church was a way to absolve yourself from sins. The church would take care of your immortal soul, if you’d just continue to pay them. This lead to a well funded church and no taxes being paid by the church.

          How anybody ever agreed to this I don’t know. We’ve invented something called an immortal soul, which is what you actually are instead of your body. We’ve also invented something called hell, which is endless suffering for your immortal soul. If you don’t follow the rules, which we’ve invented btw, your soul will end up in this hell. One of the rules is give us money.

          But then people would just simply say, I’ve never followed your rules, guess I’m fucked, no point in following the rules now. But wait, we’ve got a special deal if you call within 30 minutes and give us money. We can fix your soul so it isn’t fucked and you can try again to follow the rules. We would also like you to tell us what you did wrong, so we can use it to blackmail you, I mean so we know what part of the soul to fix.

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Historically, the church was the source of social safety nets in society. in the modern era, that’s changed to government-ran safety nets (well fare, social security, etc).

        there was also some even older precedence of the church running some of the government, so that was payment for that.

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        It seems I made a mistake in that assertion, or missremembering the last time I looked into it. regardless i was wrong about other (western) countries not including religious orgs as tax exempt.

      • Coasting0942@reddthat.com
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        8 months ago

        Oh his, I was about to say a five million fine goes against the tenets of Monopoly Man, bless his appointed CEOs on Earth

      • circuscritic@lemmy.ca
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        8 months ago

        That’s not what that means. It means it’s just an additional, and “normal”, line item on the balance sheet, like toilet paper or the water bill.

        Edit: Reposting as I replied the wrong comment initially.

        • SuckMyWang@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          It’s not normal. It’s hugely undervalued. Not getting taxed on 32 billion for an extended period of time is completely game changing. It’s like saying having to pay an $8 fine for the stolen company car is just the normal cost of doing business. That being said I see where you’re coming from. They get different rules so it’s probably seen as ok in their eyes to get an $8 car or in this case to steal the car themselves and pay an $8 fine later

          • circuscritic@lemmy.ca
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            8 months ago

            The phrase “cost of doing business” doesn’t mean “bankrupt” or “righteous penalty”, it means, especially in this context, that it’s an normalized and accepted business expenditure because of our corrupt regulatory system whereby white collar crime is NOT punished by meaningful punitive actions that would create a deterrence. Instead, any punitive measures can simply be accounted for as a “cost of doing business”.

            Let me give you a hyperbolic but extremely simple example:

            CEO: Let’s commit a fraud worth $100m

            VP: But that’s illegal

            CEO: Yes, but the fine would only be around $5m

            CFO: Perfect, I’ll add a $5m expenditure under the “cost of doing business” line item

            VP: Wow, that’s a great $5m expenditure, we’ll net $95m in profit

            CEO: Yep, that’s just the cost of doing business.

            Make sense?

            • SuckMyWang@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              I’m aware of what you are saying and I agree but only to a point. I’m saying that even as a “normal” cost of doing business the size of the fine is not normal. To take your example it’s like this:

              CEO: “Lets commit 32 BILLION dollars of fraud.”

              VP: “That’s illegal.”

              CEO: “Yes but the fine would only be around $5m.”

              VP: “Sir, I’m not condoning this but that estimate seems absurdly low for the size of the fraud?

              CEO: “You’re right, the fine should be much much higher. Can we afford to get a $500m fine as a normal operating cost?”

              CFO: “We can. I’ll also talk to my connections in Washington to get the amount lowered and anything else will be gravy. Also, VP you’re fired!”

    • alvvayson@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      It’s just so politicians can say they levied multimillion dollar fines. And the voters are placated.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Yeah we need to set fines to amount attempted to savelikelihood of getting away with itpenalty modifier. They do this math before committing these crimes, the fine needs to actually deter them

    • FederatedSaint@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      They can just lie. They don’t need to prove anything. Thing is, they’re brainwashed to think God will bless them more if they sacrifice 10%, so they go to the ends of the earth to pay, to their own massive detriment.

      • CptOblivius@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I have heard of some Mormons having to provide the church with their tax paper work to show they tithed properly. This is done through the threat of excommunication. Not sure how prevalent it is.

        • ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Yeah, that’s my understanding as well. I had a friend in the 90s who was a proud ex-communicant of the Mormon church, and according to him that was the practice then as well. You gave them whatever they asked for (pay stubs, bank statements, tax returns, etc) and they calculated your tithe for you.

    • prole@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      I don’t know how people like this sleep at night.

      On giant piles of cash.

      But no, really, a significant portion of people in positions of power have sociopathic tendencies.

    • UnculturedSwine@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      They tell themselves that they deserve it because they are doing God’s will. Mormons have this thing called the “Second Anointing” which even most members don’t know about which guarantees you a place in heaven no matter what kind of fucked up shit you do in this life. The only exception to that is apostasy and murder. This is largely the reason why so many Mormons can excuse this behavior.