Taxing the Church
Title | Taxing the Church PDF eBook |
Author | Edward A. Zelinsky |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | 281 |
Release | 2017-09-27 |
Genre | Law |
ISBN | 0190853964 |
This book explores the taxation and exemption of churches and other religious institutions, both empirically and normatively. This exploration reveals that churches and other religious institutions are treated diversely by the federal and state tax systems. Sectarian institutions pay more tax than many believe. In important respects, the states differ among themselves in their respective approaches to the taxation of sectarian entities. Either taxing or exempting churches and other sectarian entities entangles church and state. The taxes to which churches are more frequently subject - federal Social Security and Medicare taxes, sales taxes, real estate conveyance taxes - fall on the less entangling end of the spectrum. The taxes from which religious institutions are exempt - general income taxes, value-based property taxes, unemployment taxes - are typically taxes with the greatest potential for church-state enforcement entanglement. It is unpersuasive to reflexively denounce the tax exemption of religious actors and institutions as a subsidy. Tax exemption can implement the secular, non-subsidizing goal of minimizing church-state enforcement entanglement and thus be regarded as part of a normative tax base. Taxing the church or exempting the church involves often difficult trade-offs among competing and legitimate values. On balance, our federal system of decentralized legislation reasonably make these legal and tax policy trade-offs, though there is room for improvement in particular settings such as the protection of internal church communications and the expansion of the churches' sales tax liabilities.
Taxing the Church
Title | Taxing the Church PDF eBook |
Author | Edward A. Zelinsky |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | 281 |
Release | 2017 |
Genre | Law |
ISBN | 0190853956 |
The Federal Constitutionall Law on taxation and religion -- State Consitutions on religion and taxation -- The Internal revenue Code and religious institutions -- State tax statutes and religious exemptions -- Untangling entanglement -- Parsonages, parsonage allowances, and the religious exemptions from Social Security Taxes and the Health Care mandate -- Other issues for the future : Churches' lobbying, campaigning, and sales taxation -- Constitutional and tax policy issues
Tax Guide for Churches and Other Religious Organizations
Title | Tax Guide for Churches and Other Religious Organizations PDF eBook |
Author | |
Publisher | |
Pages | 44 |
Release | 1994 |
Genre | Clergy |
ISBN |
Why Churches Should Not Pay Taxes
Title | Why Churches Should Not Pay Taxes PDF eBook |
Author | Dean M. Kelley |
Publisher | HarperCollins Publishers |
Pages | 168 |
Release | 1977 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN |
Pastor, Church & Law
Title | Pastor, Church & Law PDF eBook |
Author | Richard R. Hammar |
Publisher | |
Pages | 456 |
Release | 1983 |
Genre | Juvenile Nonfiction |
ISBN | 9780882435800 |
The Question of Tax Exemption for Churches
Title | The Question of Tax Exemption for Churches PDF eBook |
Author | Andrew D. Tanner |
Publisher | |
Pages | 66 |
Release | 1963 |
Genre | Church and state |
ISBN |
Religion for Atheists
Title | Religion for Atheists PDF eBook |
Author | Alain De Botton |
Publisher | Signal |
Pages | 298 |
Release | 2012-03-06 |
Genre | Philosophy |
ISBN | 0771025998 |
From the author of The Architecture of Happiness, a deeply moving meditation on how we can still benefit, without believing, from the wisdom, the beauty, and the consolatory power that religion has to offer. Alain de Botton was brought up in a committedly atheistic household, and though he was powerfully swayed by his parents' views, he underwent, in his mid-twenties, a crisis of faithlessness. His feelings of doubt about atheism had their origins in listening to Bach's cantatas, were further developed in the presence of certain Bellini Madonnas, and became overwhelming with an introduction to Zen architecture. However, it was not until his father's death -- buried under a Hebrew headstone in a Jewish cemetery because he had intriguingly omitted to make more secular arrangements -- that Alain began to face the full degree of his ambivalence regarding the views of religion that he had dutifully accepted. Why are we presented with the curious choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle and effective rituals and practices for which there is no equivalent in secular society? Why do we bristle at the mention of the word "morality"? Flee from the idea that art should be uplifting, or have an ethical purpose? Why don't we build temples? What mechanisms do we have for expressing gratitude? The challenge that de Botton addresses in his book: how to separate ideas and practices from the religious institutions that have laid claim to them. In Religion for Atheists is an argument to free our soul-related needs from the particular influence of religions, even if it is, paradoxically, the study of religion that will allow us to rediscover and rearticulate those needs.