this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
1 points (100.0% liked)
General Discussion
12037 readers
1 users here now
Welcome to Lemmy.World General!
This is a community for general discussion where you can get your bearings in the fediverse. Discuss topics & ask questions that don't seem to fit in any other community, or don't have an active community yet.
🪆 About Lemmy World
🧭 Finding Communities
Feel free to ask here or over in: !lemmy411@lemmy.ca!
Also keep an eye on:
- !newcommunities@lemmy.world
- !communitypromo@lemmy.ca
- !new_communities@mander.xyz
- !communityspotlight@lemmy.world
- !wowthislemmyexists@lemmy.ca!
For more involved tools to find communities to join: check out Lemmyverse!
💬 Additional Discussion Focused Communities:
- !actual_discussion@lemmy.ca - Note this is for more serious discussions.
- !casualconversation@lemm.ee - The opposite of the above, for more laidback chat!
- !letstalkaboutgames@feddit.uk - Into video games? Here's a place to discuss them!
- !movies@lemm.ee - Watched a movie and wanna talk to others about it? Here's a place to do so!
- !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world - Want to talk politics apart from political news? Here's a community for that!
Rules
Remember, Lemmy World rules also apply here.
0. See: Rules for Users.
- No bigotry: including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia.
- Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here.
- Be thoughtful and helpful: even with ‘silly’ questions. The world won’t be made better by dismissive comments to others on Lemmy.
- Link posts should include some context/opinion in the body text when the title is unaltered, or be titled to encourage discussion.
- Posts concerning other instances' activity/decisions are better suited to !fediverse@lemmy.world or !lemmydrama@lemmy.world communities.
- No Ads/Spamming.
- No NSFW content.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
oh sorry there’s another key fact to this, religious institutions are tax exempt under 501(c)(3) in the same way as all other charitable organizations.
so going after “religious organizations” already means you are going to have to define which 501c3s are “allowed” or not—and unfortunately there’s a lot of crossover of semi-but-not-really religious groups. so any attempt at un-tax-exempting churches is going to look like persecution to some because the line is going be drawn somewhere. think of yoga or mindfulness studios, plenty of which are 501c3. are they religious? well, yeah, often. all of them? certainly not. so how do you choose? in any raw “tax the church” scenario you end up litigating what consitutes “religious” or not—which looks like ( and arguably might be) proto-persecution.
so, investigate the profit. publish the documents showing a church breaking its 501c3 requirements. give them 180 days to knock it off or something, then tax them like the rest of us. you’ll probably also catch some non-religious 501c3s doing shady stuff as well—and all the better.
hope this makes sense.
edit: i guess the other assumption i made is that we don’t want to just… tax all non profits. i hope we both can agree that would be shitty lol.
edit 2: ok you don’t make that assumption, so there we go.
They shouldn't be tax exempt either. If they generate profit, they should pay tax on it. Subsidies are used to benefit specific activities, and they are easier to investigate for fraud as to whether the subsidy is spent as intended.
exactly, yes, we agree.
if they generate profit, they should pay tax on it. boom bap done. 👏
ps i found this form where you can report entities which you believe may be violating the rules by generating profit or engaging in political activities.
I think we agree to an extent, but I now believe that we should end tax exempt status completely. Remove (Title 26, Subtitle A, Chapter 1, Subchapter F - Exempt Organizations) from the U.S. Code entirely. There are too many convoluted exceptions, and it generally doesn't benefit citizens to pick and choose who pays tax and who doesn't depending on what they do.
understood! i think you may have lost me and a lot of people there though. non profits do a lot of good and their exemptions are a key part of incentivising that good.