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The problem with this is that there's no profit to tax.
I hate religion as much as the next guy but taxing a non-profit charity is nonsensical.
What you actually want is:
Mega-churches make massive profits.
And unfortunately those would not be the ones targeted.
You mean massive cash surpluses.
All that cash is legally required to be spent in the course of the churches objectives, which in almost all cases will be the furtherance of religion.
That means, the minister is restricted from using that money for personal things like holidays or boats or whatever.
Yes, mega churches provide celebrity ministers a lot of perks. Thats why I said this area needs stronger restrictions.
I assume the church can pay the minister a salary...are there restrictions on that salary?
Depends on jurisdiction.
It can be taxed like any other salary. Sometimes they enjoy some tax concessions.
This is categorically untrue. Hiding profits doesn't mean they don't have them. That's just fraud. The mormon church, for example, has trillions invested.
Same for Scientology.
This is demonstrably untrue. Swimming in literal profit pools like Scrudge McDuck is life.
That's pretty similar to how it is.
I used to be a preacher. I paid taxes. Any facility space or property we rented to commercial companies (we had a psychologist who used a portion of our space during the week) was taxed.
The only real break we got versus other charities was that clergy can get a tax-freee home/apartment rental stipend if they aren't provided a personage. The idea there was that, for itenerant clergy, purchasing a home isn't realistic because they don't know where they'll live in a year. They can't take advantage of things like a mortgage interest deduction.
But my solution there is to open up tax exemption for all rent payers and to tax the living shit out of landlords to make them sell and open up housing inventory.
I said this type of thing should be curtailed. Thats not the same as teaching churches because theyre like a business.
No profit? They literally tell their congregation to give them 10-20% of their earnings.
Thats income, not profit.
By definition, its all spent in the furtherance of the club / churches objectives.
If you and I form a dinner club and every week we chip in $50 and go out for dinner, the club has no "profit" we're just sharing the cost of our hobby.
Sure, but our dinner club isn’t selling anything, while a church is.
Sure it is, our dinner club is selling great vibes.