Conflicting Veiwpoint

Conflicting Viewpoints

NAME

Professor Charles Fleming

February 1, 2016

Critical Thinking

How long will it be until we begin to see a movement egged on by activists and encouraged by receptive judges to revoke the tax exemptions currently enjoyed by churches? A few months? A year? I don't know precisely when it will happen, but I do know that it's going to happen (Linker, 2015).

The rationale behind granting such exemptions to non-profits (including churches) is that they are presumed to contribute to the common good in ways that for-profit enterprises do not, by engaging in charitable and philanthropic activities.

If churches can prove that this assumption is correct, then leave them the exemption. Lately, some churches have done more to harm society then to help. For instance, all the abortion restrictions that they constantly support really only hurt the poor, they have no effect on the wealthy. Now they are petitioning to make their prejudice against gays into law, giving them a “bigotry” exemption. The tax exemption should be subject to a case by case examination, as the “presumption” is questionable at best.

Churches have been exempt from paying taxes from the beginning of the country, and long before the law or any government agency recognized them as "non-profit" organizations. Churches were exempted because they were presumed to play the vitally important social role — a role essential to self-government — of inculcating moral virtue in citizens.

Since 1954, section 508c of the Internal Revenue Code has stipulated that churches are automatically tax-exempt under section 503c3 as non-profit enterprises. That's why, legally, they don't have to pay federal income taxes, why those who donate money to churches are allowed to deduct those donations from their own taxable income, and why states and municipalities typically mirror these federal exemptions. (Linker, 2015)

Some people may argue churches earn...