LOL Democrats - Tik Tok on the clock, but the party don't stop

[Melkerson]

I think everyone on #TeamTaxNonProfits is for them paying those taxes also.

[microbet]

Is everyone who wants every church, temple and mosque in the United States as if they were a corporation a CPA looking for work?

[Melkerson]

@microbet

I’m not suggesting you said “all”, but I am suggesting “most”. I will also suggest that changing things along the lines being discussed would accomplish almost nothing good (like they still wouldn’t pay taxes - just like Nike and FedEx don’t and Apple barely does) and would do significant harm (mostly because of the complexity and accounting, not actual taxes).

I’m having a hard time understanding the “significant harm” here. The problem is that they’re going to have to hire an extra accountant?

[microbet]

Yeah, that’s it. It’s an onerous requirement that would do a lot of harm.

[Melkerson]

@microbet

Is everyone who wants every church, temple and mosque in the United States as if they were a corporation a CPA looking for work?

I’m definitely not, so I think we can safely answer no on that one.

[Melkerson]

@microbet

Yeah, that’s it. It’s an onerous requirement that would kill a lot of programs.

I guess I’ll take your word for it. It honestly doesn’t sound that bad to me, but if you’ve got some experience to the contrary, I’ll defer to that.

[microbet]

I’ve had somewhat large churches and temples as clients and it’s extremely hard to get them to do anything businessy. They have no interest, no expertise, limited funds, an extreme aversion to risk, the decision makers meet once a month and it’s extremely hard to keep their attention for long enough. They’d drop stuff like supplying housing for indigent people when it became too complicated for them to handle.

You want them to account for their expenses when they make soup for people? Or donations/revenue at a bake sale? There’s no one to do that. They’d just stop. A lot them would anyway…or cut back…and it would accomplish close to nothing. It would just be symbolic.

[Melkerson]

@microbet

You want them to account for their expenses when they make soup for people? Or donations/revenue at a bake sale? There’s no one to do that. They’d just stop.

I’ve got some second hand experience with this as my father-in-law has spent more time in church-related activities in his retirement. He’s on lots of committees that are as you describe, and he’s the one dude paying attention and he’s pretty sharp. Or course, getting others to agree to do fairly obviously beneficial things is difficult.

Having said that, even though they are a non-profit, they already have someone tracking expenses and such (I’m pretty sure it’s a CPA who is a church member, who gives them a discounted rate). They’re actually in the red, so as you said there would be no change for them. But I don’t see any significantly increased accounting burden in their specific case if they became a for-profit corp.

[microbet]

@Melkerson

But I don’t see any significantly increased accounting burden in their specific case if they became a for-profit corp.

They’d have to file all this stuff with the IRS and probably quarterly and not just record it for their own use. You don’t think filing corporate taxes is a burden?

[Melkerson]

@microbet

@Melkerson

But I don’t see any significantly increased accounting burden in their specific case if they became a for-profit corp.

They’d have to file all this stuff with the IRS and probably quarterly and not just record it for their own use. You don’t think filing corporate taxes are a burden?

No. Obviously it is a non-zero amount of work. I just think it is not a significant burden, at least in the one case that I have familiarity with. I’ll probably bring it up with my father-in-law when I seem him during the holidays. I’m quite curious about how much burden it would be for his church.

[microbet]

There are almost 500000 churches/temples/mosques/etc in the United States. Surely it’s better to investigate large offenders if there seems to be cause, than to change the rules for everyone.

[jmakin]

megachurches are like 10% of the churches but have the majority of congregants, just go after them, I’d be shocked if any of them do any kind of good for the community whatsoever

i’m for taxing the fuck out of all of them, but if you wanna make the argument that some shouldn’t, it’s definitely not the megachurches that should receive any leeway, they run like full blown businesses and their leadership makes buckets and buckets of completely untaxed money.

[jmakin]

it’s kind of a moot discussion because if current trends continue the church is almost certainly gonna wither away to a shrill whisper in our lifetimes, young people have absolutely zero interest in organized religion, and organized religion isn’t willing to make the changes it’ll take to get them interested.

[Melkerson]

@jmakin

megachurches are like 10% of the churches but have the majority of congregants, just go after them, I’d be shocked if any of them do any kind of good for the community whatsoever

i’m for taxing the fuck out of all of them, but if you wanna make the argument that some shouldn’t, it’s definitely not the megachurches that should receive any leeway, they run like full blown businesses and their leadership makes buckets and buckets of completely untaxed money.

What kind of law are you going to write that dissects out Mega churches and leaves everyone else alone while avoiding significant loopholes.

[mosdef]

I am not sure why I should care about the corporate tax problem when deciding about this other problem. One problem doesn’t justify the other.

Anyway, if it is true that eliminating the tax preferred treatment for churches will hardly change anything, then we should just go ahead and do that. We can only assume the churches won’t complain, since it barely impacts them.

[mosdef]

@microbet

They have no interest, no expertise, limited funds, an extreme aversion to risk, the decision makers meet once a month and it’s extremely hard to keep their attention for long enough.

I am worried that society will be irreparably harmed if we don’t pull out all the stops to keep these high performing institutions alive.

[microbet]

It won’t increase the taxes they pay. It will increase how much they pay accountants and it will affect what activities they are willing to do.

[mosdef]

Even worse - the ruthlessly efficient mega churches raking in million bilking morons of their money will keep humming along, the little local churches that might actually include someone trying to do some good will die. It’s the worst of both worlds.

[jmakin]

number of congregants, amount of revenue

[microbet]

Leave your money and identification at home. Put on some dirty clothes. Don’t talk to friends or family. Go out into the world and try to find a way to survive. Let me know who helps you out.