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Why do churches have tax free status? They bring in billions of dollars in donations and some even own money making businesses that are NOT tax free if owned by regular citizens. This is not right. If a church owns a business, that business is not a member of that church, it is a commercial entity that should be taxed just like any other.
This country was setup to treat everyone equal. If I lived where a church owned something like the local Coca-Cola distributorship, and I owned the Pepsi distributorship, they would have a financial advantage over me because their business would not be required to pay taxes on its profits. Works the same for day care centers (DCC) owned and operated by churches. They don’t even have to pay their workers a fair wage nor do they have to abide by all the rules that a civilian owned DCC is required to. Very unfair and very harmful for the businesses that have to compete with the church owned businesses.
Charities are not much better. There are charities out there that are tax free and are set up for one thing, to pay the person who runs it a very, very large salary. I researched one a few months back, it brings in a little over 1.2 mil a year, the person who is in charge of it and controls the purse strings has a salary of over $800,000.00 and his wife works for it too, so that takes care of nearly every dime they collect each year and have for the last 10 years or so. Nothing but a rip off if you ask me. The charity pays no taxes and I’m sure he has figured out a way to not pay taxes on his salary.
We, as a nation, need to tell our congressmen and women that we want fair laws passed and that means no more tax free status for any religious or charitable organization. This will help pay off the national debt and will make those who would be thieves think twice about starting a bogus charity.