Holy Taxes

Nothing is certain except for death and taxes; unless you believe in an imaginary invisible sky wizard. Many religions believe in some afterlife or bodily resurrection after death, but for now I’ll discuss the issue of religious tax exemptions. It’s pretty obvious that many different churches are multi-billion dollar organizations, but why are they protected from contributing anything to the United States of America of which they are a part of?

After a bit of research, the common excuse that I’ve found is that the tax exemption is an effort to protect the practice of religious freedom. Apparently if churches were taxed it would discourage them from freely practicing their religion. This doesn’t make sense to me. How come other American freedoms are not tax exempt. We have the freedom of speech, press, petition, and assembly to name a few. But how come reporters and authors have to pay taxes? No one argues that taxing them infringes on their ability to practice their freedoms. Reporters and authors continue to practice their freedoms AND pay taxes with no problems at all. Curious.

Perhaps the religious might argue that their donations are sacred offerings to a particular god. Because even though an omnipotent deity is capable of creating galaxies, it needs a little help with its earthly bank account. I understand that one particular religious group considers their certain god to be sacred and eligible for tax exemption, but what about a crazy weird cult like Scientology? That fake religion should be taxed, right? Especially considering that their founder, L. Ron Hubbard, is know for saying "I'd like to start a religion. That's where the money is!". The problem is that Scientologists view other religions (like Mormonism) as being crazy weird. So, who’s right? Since there is no verifiable way of know which deity is real and deserving of tax exemption, the only fair thing is to exempt all churches or tax all churches. If all churches are exempt then what’s stopping me from creating “The Obviously Fake Church of Corrupt Tax Exemption”.

Now, I know what your thinking, “but what about all the good charity churches provide?”. And sure, some churches provide charitable donations, but only after they pay for all their properties and churches and mansion castles *cough cough* I mean temples and pay all their leaders and travel expenses and advertisement campaigns and legal department and so on. And finally after all that they give an embarrassing fraction of a percentage to charitable causes. OR you could just donate your money to an actual secular charity which forwards the majority of resources to actual needy causes. If you’re going to claim the Mormon 10% tithing as a law of God, then please provide a verifiable resource not based on faith to support your claim. I’ll save you the time - there’s no evidence.

After reading this article, if you can think of any logical reason why the IRS should leave the multi-billion dollar fiction-based organizations exempt from being responsible, please let me know, for I cannot think of one legitimate excuse.