Ministers Threatened with Jail/Fines For Refusing to Officiate at Gay Weddings

[Jenny A]

We were talking about property taxes....not income taxes....dummy.

Regarding income tax.....I'd like to simplify the tax code and eliminate all deductions.

You may have been talking only about property taxes, but I sure wasn't. The same arguments apply to all taxes.

As to income taxes, eliminating the religious organization exemption certainly would simplify things.

(By the way, most deductions have to do with determining what actually is net income after the costs of producing gross income are deducted. Eliminating other deductions isn't such a bad idea.)

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That is essentially true. A government could use differential taxation to discriminate among religions, to lighten the burden of a favored group and increase the burden on ones not in favor.

That's a good point. Don't like a particular church that's been there for 100 years.....over inflate the value of their property. Who's to say that cathedral isn't worth a billion dollars. Its not like there's are dynamic market for them.

Maybe if the fire and police levies were based strictly on square footage of the lot and not the value of the lot/improvements....then I would be okay with churches paying fire and police levy. You'd have to raise the tax on everyone which would make it hard to punish a church you don't like.

Let's not get paranoid. It is possible to litigate a property value assment, and as far as I know there hasn't been a rash of over valuation of union, or party held property.