The LA Times reports that a politically active, liberal church in California is being threatened with loss of tax-exempt status by the IRS – even though the author of the sermon in question carefully avoided explicit endorsement of either candidate. Meanwhile, literally thousands of right-wing evangelical churches routinely do the same thing to help right-wing candidates and causes, and even coordinate their campaigning with the Republican Party, apparently without the IRS ever saying “boo.”
Disgusting.
(Of course, I have to admit that perhaps the IRS under Bush is more evenhanded than I imagine, and maybe there are many instances of the IRS cracking down on equally political right-wing pulpit activism. I’d welcome being proved wrong on this one, but I don’t expect to be. Hat tips: Seeing the Forest, The Reality Based Community, and
I actually was reading about this the other day and thought it would be a good discussion topic. My curiousity was this:
If you recall, there was a church that had a sign in the lawn about a mile from the house that was a ‘Yes on 36’ sign. Isn’t that the same thing? Did the area churches get busted for their conservative politics as well, or is it only the liberals?
Well, it wouldn’t surprise me if Bush were behind this IRS crackdown. He has always struck me as rather petty.
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It’s a quagmire. If the Catholic church puts up a sign saying, “God is Pro-Life,” is that a political statement or a religious one? Clearly it’s both.
The IRS should not be put in the position of evaluating people’s tax status based on the content of their speech. While we’re at it, the “incidental income” rules for not-for-profits (Must the museum bookstore charge a sales tax?) are a complete mess, too. We should grant tax-exempt status to all not-for-profits regardless of speech – basically making all lobbying and political campaigns tax-exempt – or none. But I can’t find any sustainable middle ground.
I don’t understand why churches are exempt from taxes in the first place. Religion is a money making business. It should be taxed.
You all may be interested to know that when this got posted on Free Republic 2 days ago, the overwhelming reaction from the right-wingers there was that this was an outrage and that the IRS should back off.
I don’t understand why churches are exempt from taxes in the first place…
Historically, religions which were unpopular with the state were taxed into oblivion. It was decided that the only way to prevent the power of the state being used to oppress minority faiths was to take away the power of the state, in this context.
Religion is a money making business. It should be taxed.
Do you also hold this position vis a vis political activist groups, labor unions, Ralph Nader, etc.?
I don’t think that churches are automatically exempt from taxes. Rather, I think that IRS Code section 501(c)(3) permits religious organizations to organize as not-for-profit organizations. And registered not-for-profit organizations are exempt from certain federal taxes (although they still must pay withholding and FICA taxes on employee salaries).
However, I think that not-for-profits can lose their tax exemption if they engage in certain activities such as discriminating on the basis of race (Bob Jones University) or making political endorsements:
Churches are assumed by the IRS to qualify as 501c3s, unless someone comes up with proof otherwise. Other organizations desiring 501c3 status have to spend a fair amount of time proving that they are not-for-profit, though once approved, there is less scrutiny (usually).
All Saints Church in Pasadena is known for its sermons, but I don’t think they cross the line into endorsement, which is prohibited. Peace, is actually a moral concept in many religions(even if they don’t practice it).
The minister who gave the sermon wrote an op-ed in today’s LA TIMES.
The Episocopal minister who baptised me was actually ran out of his church by his congregation after he gave a sermon against the Vietnam War saying he didn’t think it was a war Jesus would support. My mom was the only one who sat in her pew during his entire sermon and she got copies of it which she has circulated everywhere since. No IRS involvement back then.
But there’s lots of churches that are involved in politics, though many know what lines not to cross. African-American churches in our city, for example, hold forums for political candidates and issues but do not endorse. UU churches do like, but at least in the church in my city, everything’s vetted carefully by the Board of Directors. I co-chaired the church’s social action committee for three years and we had to be careful.
I’m for tax-free status, because it’d be like it is with the major corporations vs the smaller businesses. Who gets taxed there, and who gets the breaks and “welfare”? It’d be the same w/ the big vs little churches.
Free Republic isn’t all bad. They protested the treatment of Maribel Cuevas by Fresno police and city officials last summer.
Yeah, I’d heard a similar story. But it doesn’t make a lot of sense today. First, I am not aware of any federal limit on a state’s authority to tax churches; section 501(c)(3) only binds federal taxing authorities. Second, the obvious remedy for being taxed into oblivious is to sue under the Equal Protection clause. But instead of having a policy stating that not-for-profits may be taxed on the same basis as everyone else, we have a policy that says that the government will subsidize not-for-profits, providing them with roads, police protection, fire protection, secure boarders, etc., free of charge. Consequently, every taxpayer is an unwitting contributor to every not-for-profit.
This might be a goofy if harmless policy. But when your local gym is competing with the tax-exempt YMCA, or NARAL is competing with the tax-exempt Roman Catholic Church, or the for-profit United Health Care is competing with not-for-profit health care groups, the law seems downright pernicious.
Let’s treat them uniformly, anyway. And maybe we do; I don’t know.
Oh, drat. Forgot to answer question of poster #1. ISSUE referendums are viewed more leniently than involvement in elections of specific candidates and parties. Churches can have unlimited speech, and spend up to 5% (I think, I am not a tax lawyer) of total operating budget on political issue advocacy. This means they can post signs for referendums, make targeted mailings to congregants, perhaps buy a billboard or take out a newspaper ad. Churches CANNOT explicitly endorse a particular candidate or a particular party. When dealing with the last presidential election, it was OK for churches to highlight the issues that the voters ought to consider. It should not have been OK to state that members must confess and repent if they vote for a candidate who does not promise to abolish legalized abortion, whatever other positions the candidate holds (the Catholic Church did this in some dioceses including my own. The Episcopal diocese gained a few new members from departing disgusted Catholics). Hell (non-Dante version) will freeze over before anyone attacks the Catholic Church’s tax status. The episode in LA, where the guest preacher (not the resident rector or a current church employee) told the congregation that good Christians could vote for either candidate in good conscience, but do consider the unnecessary and illmanaged war in Iraq, and do consider aid to the poor, should have been OK with the IRS. The targeting of an Episcopal Church highlights how the EC is no longer considered the church of the “good and great”, the power brokers, captains of industry, and politicians, but is now as sidelined as the Pentecostal denominations (those of Ashcroft et al) were 50 years ago.
Thanks for all the good info, Nancy. From everything I’ve read, it seems like the IRS is way out of line on this one.
There are numerous political candidates that speak in Churches every election cycle; there are Mosques where the rhetoric is equally politicized yet the IRS does nothing to any of them. This is clearly a shot across the bow of the Church and free speech, and is ludicrous. The Church’s position has been historically anti war (accept for a minority many of whom are fundamentalists. The Just War arguments accepted by many are not even universally accepted within the Church.) That a Pastor would preach against war is not new and not political speech per say especially when both candidates supported at some level the war the Sermon was addressing. (Prince of Peace, whats so hard to get? Call it an “illustration” not an endorsement, and move on.)
Every day I wake hoping it is getting better, and then this type of nonsense arises to take focus away from real issues, like hunger, violence, war, housing, education, equal rights…. Blessings.
Tax exempt nonprofits with more than $25,000 in annual revenue, are required to file an annual financial report – a form 990 – which has to be made available to anyone who requests it. This is supposed to insure a degree of transparency into an organization’s financial dealings. Churches, ministries, aposolates and the like, are exempt from filing 990’s, however. In my experience it’s pretty damn easy to get yourself this exemption.
Once you do, many state’s than exempt you from their fiscal reporting requirements, as well.
Now I’m the first to admit, that the 990 can be manipulated in a variety of ways, and should be revised. But I think all nonprofits should be subject to much more oversight than they’re currently getting. You only need three board members to incorporate as a 501(c)(3), and it doesn’t matter if they’re all family members or not. Financial supporters of small, religious nonprofits tend to not ask a lot of questions, which is a damn shame, because there’s a whole lot of self-dealing going on out there.
Personally, I think the only organizations that should be tax exempt, are those which provide charity in the forms of food, clothing, shelter and medical care to the needy.
There are at least four churches in my small, rural county whose ministers preached directly from the pulpit advocating voting for Bush. Two are Pentecostal Holiness, two are Baptist. We know the dates, the ministers, and what they said, because upset parishioners steamed into our Dem HQ the next day and told us.
After Election Day, when these same churches brought vanfuls of very infrequent voters to the polls and instructed them how to vote INSIDE THE POLLING PLACES, we discussed whether or not to try to put together an IRS complaint. We decided, despite how bitter we were (this fundamentalist turnout caused the defeat of our D.A. candidate by 200 votes), not to get into this fight. In a small community, it’s just a recipe for disaster.
The news about the persecution of All Saints’ is hard to take, after what we went through last fall.
The targeting of an Episcopal Church highlights how the EC is no longer considered the church of the “good and great”, the power brokers, captains of industry, and politicians.
That’s because the ECUSA (of which I am a member) no longer is “the Republican Party at prayer”. Since the 70’s, or even earlier, the ECUSA has taken positions that are viewed by the opponents of those positions as being inconsistent with Scripture and Christian belief, and that in many cases are seen by said opponents as “leftist” or “liberal”.
In many cases, the actions of the ECUSA have been at odds with it’s own doctrines. For example, there are bishops that have denied the existence of the Trinity and Jesus’ resurrection, and yet disciplinary proceedings have either failed or have not been undertaken. There are parishes and dioceses that are performing same-sex marriages despite canons to the contrary. There are parishes and dioceses that have been distributing Holy Communion to unbaptized people despite a canon to the contrary. But no discipline has been brought to bear.
People are quitting; the ECUSA’s numbers have been falling steadily for some time. Some are likely leaving organized religion altogether, but many are either “swimming the Tiber” or “swimming the Bosphorous” (joining the RCC or an Orthodox church). There are also some very active groups of ECUSA members that are either joining “continuing Anglican churches”, which are churches that practice Anglicanism as it was generally done in the ECUSA prior to the adoption of the 1979 edition of the Book of Common Prayer, or that are putting themselves under the authority of bishops in other Anglican provinces (the Anglican Communion is made up of 39 provinces; the ECUSA is one of them). Some admit female clerics, some don’t; none will be ordaining non-celibate homosexuals. Some of them use the 1928 Book of Common Prayer; others accept the use of the 1979 BCP.
I post all this not to invite a theological debate, but to illuminate the earlier statement I quoted above. The denomination that claims 11 Presidents as members is no longer viewed by the Establishment as part of the Establishment.
I think a church would have no right to promote a particular candidate, assist their campaign, etc., and still retain their tax-exempt status.
However, is it a violation of tax laws for a church to say, “It is sinful to support candidates/legislation that supports something we consider immoral”, as long as they don’t name any particular candidates?
Can morality and voting be separated?
mousehounde says, “Religion is a money making business. It should be taxed.”
In reading that, I wonder if you understand what the concept of a not-for-profit (NFP) corporation is. An NFP is not defined by whether it is profitable or not. No corporation, regardless of the purpose for organizing it, can fail to make a profit and survive for very long. An NFP is supposed to make money and accumulate assets. What distinguishes an NFP from a for-profit is that the purpose of an NFP cannot include enriching it’s owners. Any profits it makes must be re-invested in the business and expended for the socially beneficial purposes that it was created for. Unlike a for-profit, none of the profits can be distributed to stockholders or partners or other owners.
If you already know all this, I apologize. But I run into this a lot when talking to people about NFP’s. They do make money. They have to. They should accumulate both physical assets and investments. That doesn’t mean that an NFP that makes money should (under the tax laws) be taxed. Now, if you meant that statement as a philosophical judgement, that’s a different story, which I’ll leave alone.
After Election Day, when these same churches brought vanfuls of very infrequent voters to the polls and instructed them how to vote INSIDE THE POLLING PLACES, we discussed whether or not to try to put together an IRS complaint.
That surely looks like an IRS violation to me. I don’t think a church has a right to do this and to also remain tax-exempt.
It also looks like an election law violation, which means that not only the church folks but the election judges should be answering for their actions in criminal court.
Why does every religious leader say ‘God HE’ ‘ or ‘God HIS’ or ‘pray to HIM”? Does (what we call God) have a penis?????
What we call “God” is a universal spirt which has no shape or form. But dumb people can’t understand that! It is so stupid that thousands of minisers are making millons of dollars while more thousands are on the brink of starvation. Religion is the bigges hoax on this planet.