Church tax exemption has been criticized by several atheist and anti-theist groups as being unfair and have called for the government to tax religious places of worship. These groups often lack understanding of the grand scheme of the global economy. Churches currently do not pay 83.5 billion a year according to some figures. Which is about the same amount of money as food stamps. People are quick to jump to say this is a huge amount of money, when again it isn’t.
Let’s do the math. There are about 450,000 churches in the united states give or take. If each of those churches were to bring in 100 dollars a week in donations that would be 45 million. As you can see this would accrue quickly. Then we have to factor in the costs and expenses of the church. Setting aside taxes since they are tax exempt, churches have to pay their pastors and priests, utilities and bills, and use the leftover money to operate food drives, soup kitchens, shelters among other things.
People often forget that as non-profit organizations churches must spend all leftover money to be considered no profit. If i was a non-profit and made 3k a month. I could claim 2k in bills and expansion ideas, and the 1k would go to charity.
“The federal government DOES NOT subsidize churches in any way! None of your tax dollars are going towards churches, like so many seem to think. The churches are only exempt from taxes because they are non-profit organizations, which means that they are not working to make money. Churches are treated just like any other non-profit, it's not unfair and it's not against the First Amendment. It would be unfair to make them pay taxes while other non-profit organizations are tax exempt.”
