Questions for your Religious friends.

[johndoe122931]

Before we built our church we bought a piece of property that was taxed before we paid for it. Then we built the building paying taxes on all the material that went into building the building and all the state permits. Then we pay for the utilities to keep the building maintained. We follow all the codes the state requires us to follow to keep the building up and open, a building that offers social services to ALL in need it regardless of age, race, or creed. We as church members pay taxes every year to the government including property taxes on our own homes and businesses...

Oh, I see, no, we don't pay the $600 or so dollars every year on the land that the building sits on. I'm sorry, I would actually love to pay it and have no problems with that except there is the weird idea out there call separation of church and state. I still really don't understand it, but again I'm just a stupid backwards Christian, my feeble little mind has a hard time grasping such concepts.

Great, dodge with 'we pay other taxes and stuff'. It's clear that you don't understand religion's special privilege, it's part of the reason that the nonbelievers have an issue with believers.

Do these 'social services' (a common religious claim that does not rise to the secular tax support issue) come with a helping of god thrown in? The monthly donations I make to our local homeless shelter don't come with a secondary agenda.

You keep saying "great dodge", and I am not exactly sure what I am dodging. It's clear you care WAY too much about this so-called "special privilege" we have. Now, if I because I am a Christian were tax-exempt personally and didn't have to pay property tax nor income tax then I would be more likely to agree with you, but I'm not.

Helping of God? LOL. Nice. So let me give you an example. We get together and will make about 100 or so sandwiches (plain of course) with little packets of mayo and mustard and a small bag of chips with a bottle of water and we go out to homeless camps and pass them out to people who are hungry. Then we go on our way. People will ask us, "why are you giving us food" and in turn say because you are hungry and we want to help you. They shrug their shoulders and move on. We don't force them to listen to us preach nor do we tell them that they need to go to church or follow our beliefs, we simply feed the hungry. 

Another example is that we have "adopted a highway". We go out every quarter (except the winter months) and pick up trash on the side of the highway. We pick up used needles and condoms and all sorts of other trash and haul it to the dump. We don't get paid for that nor receive anything in return from anybody and is on our own dime (with exception of trash bags which the state provides, which we have said that we will pay for the trash bags but they refuse). 

Clothing drives, food drives, we go door to door in our neighborhoods and ask people if they need their lawns mowed( or shoveled during winter) or decks fixed all on our own dime and we want nothing in return. We don't preach to these people nor do we say they have to come to church before we help them. 

There are many other things we do, but I think I've answered your question.

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Seems that church doesn't know how to play the game correctly.  When I worked at the big Baptist church in Dallas in the accounting department, they were tax exempt on everything...including sales tax.  So, buying materials, etc. was not taxed.  And in the event tax was paid it was the job of the accounting department to get that money back from whatever business had collected it by presenting their tax exempt status.

JohnDoe...you need a better bookkeeper.

Game? This is not a game to us, we take it very seriously. We are not a business trying to make as much money as we can. Other church bodies may act that way but we do not.

No, our bookkeeper is doing a wonderful job.