Should Churches Remain Tax-Exempt?

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Presumably the people attending a church pay taxes, and then they are forced to pay taxes again through their church.

And how would church goers be "forced to pay taxes again through their church"?

He's implying that a church would have to pass on a cost to parishioners (whether it be directly or indirectly) to cover the cost of the tax levied against their capital assets and/or service. The implication therefore is that people would be less likely to go to church and/or pay for its services, resulting a death spiral as the church in turn has less cash in which to do...whatever it does.

The assumptions included here are that a church would have to levy money from parishioners to cover the cost (not necessarily true - a lot of churches have vast wealth in reserves in the form of cash and capital - they could potentially absorb the costs there or indeed look to their operations and forecast a deduction from that - I'm sure some would notice a difference and some wouldn't. But that's the free market for you!) and/or that people would stop going to church and worshipping as a result of this additional cost (which is of course true, but it doesn't violate the 1st amendment as it doesn't stop people from being religious).