JQPublix's side room

Laney chuckles...

I want and that would be a real tax cut too early in the morning for this!

Personally, I can see that the church building/grounds where people gather to worship being tax exempt. However, all the other capitalist enterprises engaged in by the churches should be taxed. These are enterprises such as owning/operating convenience stores, land/building purchases for community affairs, land/buildings purchased as a "retreat" for the pastor and deacons, or whatever, and lets not forget Bingo (LOL). I believe that churches should pay taxes on anything other that the main meeting place for worship. Also, the pastor's who use church motor vehicles for driving to and from work, should pay the standard rate of mileage, the same as police officers do who drive their patrol vehicles to and from work. Just my personal opinion.

If a church can show where they are not making a profit off the people if the pators can be forth coming about their income and what they pay taxes on then those churches could maybe enjoy tax exempt entities. On second thought to answer your question I think churches should be done away with all together. There is alot of money being made without taxes being paid and it is not being used to help the needy.

Heh Axe How you doing?

JQPublix, how does paying taxes on income make a church "state-run"? I pay taxes on my income. I don't consider myself "state-run".

I agree with Axekick that church's MUST be held accountable for the money they bring in. At what point does a "charitable" church-run enterprise become a "for-profit" endeavour?

Caddyboy, you are correct that churches are scrutinized more closely than some people think. They do have to have receipts for everything. At our church, once a year we have a meeting where all the memebers are given the budget that we have to approve, and everything is itemized so we know what is being spent where, including pastor's salaries etc. For the children's part that I am involved in, I have to have receipts for anything I want to be reimbursed for like teaching materials. If I don't keep receipts, I don't get reimbursed. The churches are held responsible to the IRS for all the spending and receiving. I don't know why people think that money that is given to the church is just used for whatever and they are not held accountable for how they spend it.

FarmTruck and Axe,

There is a distinction between a church employee paying taxes and the church itself. Church employees are required to pay individual taxes no matter what. What alarmed me was that Axe said churches should not be exempt from taxes because of it. A church is responsible also for that not to be an issue.

Its a personal accountability for a church to make sure the funds are being misused. Making a statement saying every church should not be given tax exemption is rather obvious given any DOI statement. So either we are going against the DOI and thus any establishment of the Constitution, or we aren't.

Cefalo Dollar, Joyce Myers, and 4 others have been asked by several senators to provide their churches financial records and all have refused they are all about to be indicted. These pastors run multi million dollar churches and have used their non-profit status to build empires and now congress wants them to show and prove there are no personal profits being made and they all have LAWYERED UP! It was not Jim Bakers adultery that brought down his empire it was the IRS. With pay offs failed business ventures where investors lost money non-profit right and lavish spending by the Bakers and other high ranking members of the church board.

JQPublix, what I, and it seems Axekick, are saying, is that enough churches have failed to be personally accountable for the funds that they generate, and the means by which they generate them.

In my own church, a daycare program was once run. I know for a fact that a local church allowed members to take advantage of the church's facilities and utilities to basically run a small business out of. After much grumbling amongst the membership, they no longer operate there, but that is but one small example, with personal experience, within a local congregation, which shows how lines can be blurred, and things such as that can get out of hand.