Churches tax free?

fixed it

 

no problem

 

lighten up. let people say what they want.youll have a heart attack before your old.

[FONT=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif]God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change( and canadians );
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference. [/FONT]

 

I've always said that were I to win a bazillion dollars, I'd go back to university and study the history of religion and theology. One of my courses touched on it, and it was fascinating.

If you were to read the teachings of several religions, you'd find several concepts are identical. Enough, in fact, that I've often theorized that everyone's God is actually the same God, just by different names. I believe, and I've heard this before, that religions are all derivatives of the same basis. At some point in history, there's been a split.

Myself, I'm agnostic. The Christian says "yes!", the atheist says no, and antagonistic says, "Maybe?" Seriously, I used to be fairly religious, then God and I had a disagreement. But after studying several religions, I've decided I don't have a problem with religion, just organized religion.

 

Reminds me of the sign on wall in the House of Blue Lights in Easy Rider.

If god didn't exist it would be necessary to invent him.

Humans have been reinventing different versions as far back as we go.

 

i like that song as well, it has a lot of meaning and i think he does a good job of translating that from a musical point.
i find it so overwhelming that even tho Christ has been apart of my life for a short time, i can much more easily defend my faith than i ever could not believing. life is a strange road and full of hurts i guess letting go of that was the best thing thats ever happened to me.
im 21 soon to be 22 and met Christ this past febuary over coming my fear of crying and confessing my wrong doing in front of 87 church members, the awesome thing was that the altar was full of people praying for me and my salvation. thats part of my lifes story, to me its only thing worth remembering.

 

Zack, you testifying in front of the church fellowship is awesome for you!

and it lets the evil one know he can't consume your soul...God has your back...others are praying for you...

For me, when I wake up and say my morning prayer...the Devil says "oh chit, he's awake, this guy's a hard one to corrupt, I hate my job" L0L

and you should definatelly read John Eldridge's books

"Wild at Heart"
"Fathered by God"
"Walking with God"
"Epic"
"Waking the Dead"


there are others...

Bless you young man.

 

Churches are not "For Profit". They are non-profits which are subject to IRS regulations for any 501c3 organization. Any organization that is not a 501c3 or behaves in a manner which is not in accordance with those rules (e.g. political activities) would have to pay taxes. Those same guidelines regulate any non-profit entities like the Food Bank. If they're a "For Profit" church, then they can be taxed like any other business. Property owned by the church does not necessarily make it non-taxable. For example, our church owns 5 homes that our church received back in the 1960s. We pay property tax on all those homes. We do not pay tax on the church building itself.

Most churches which are too small to own their own buildings, rent or lease them. As a result, the owner of the property is paying property tax on that building. One of the larger churches here in San Diego (Horizon Christian Fellowship), leases its property from the City of San Diego. So the city is getting income from property it owns, much more than it would if it were just collecting property tax.

 

I'm confused by the grammar. Do you want God to grant you the serenity to "accept Canadians" or do you want God to just grant you Canadians.

 

IMO the churches that generate huge revenues and choose to spend large sums of it on elaborate churches or investment properties are not non profit, even though they do meet the criteria set by the IRS. to me a non profit is an organization with a modest facility and uses all of its revenue (less operating costs) to help the needy and the poor.

 

fuck yeah

 

You mean like the Johns Hopkins Hospital, St Jude Children's Research Hospital, Shriners Hospitals for Children, and the Mayo Clinic?

Guy, you need to understand helping the poor is not the sole purpose of a church. Instead, the very first function is to attend to their own members, in the form of fostering community, facilitating social interaction, offering moral guidence, providing spiritual comfort, and so on. Many consider that alone quite worthwhile. But, of course, as an obvious extension of that, most churches go further, based on their own religious convictions, to aid the poor and disadvantaged within their served communities. Most consider that worthwhile.

 

Guy, you need to understand that the tax exemption raises non church goers taxes and that the church pays nothing towards the most essential public services of a functional society. you want to go to church that's great, but the people that don't should not be held responsible to pay the churches portion of taxes that are used to benefit the community as a whole.

 

You scoffed at the 3% of catholic schools not being an important impact on reducing the taxpayer burden on public school cost.

I wonder if taxing churches would even change taxpayer burden by 1/2%?

 

how do you feel about other property tax exemptions?

 

the catholic church is the 3rd largest landowner in the world and they don't pay any property tax.

http://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-biggest-landowners-2011-3?op=1

such as?

 

No one ever answered my question from a couple pages back. Im just wondering.
How will taxing a church help these more important issues.

How about high gas prices?
how about rising food costs?
how about health care costs rising?
how about no jobs and bad economy?

Those are the things that effect ALL of us.
Not churches and taxes. I think the least of our worries is churches. I understand that some of you believe the government will do a great job with the extra money.
But last time I checked, we have a lot of waste and government isn't the best with our money.

 

agreed +1

 

What the govt does with our money is criminal. All of them doesn't matter which party they are all out for themselves and their power.