Debate: Churches ought to pay taxes

I. Religion is a social goodThe conclusion to this point is short and sweet. Vote Con if you think there is even a slight chance of taxation harming religious life. Throughout the entire debate there has never been any attempt to refute the actual impacts that I brought up in this contention. Religious experience betters a persons quality and quantity of life as well as increasing the positive influence they have on their community. Don't let these impacts get lost in all of the numbers thrown around in this debate. It is not remotely conceivable that taxing religious institutions would do anything but harm them. On the margins, extra expense burdens *always* harm the bottom line. This is simply a fact of business, and Hayd pretending like a $26,000 cost spread out over 50 "customers" (congregants) is nothing or that massive organizations like the Catholic Church wouldn't spend a ton of money on tax lawyers doesn't make his case any more credible. It comes off more as grasping at straws--he would've been better off to concede some impact and try to outweigh it, because it's incredibly clear that extra expense harms institutions ON THE MARGINS. Small churches that are already struggling will close. Services that are attended by fewer congregants will stop. Struggling branches of large religions, especially in under populated areas, will shut down. And with them community and social capital that has been built up over years, often generations, will vanish overnight. And all of this for nothing. He mocks my argument about a changing business model as vague, but when you're dealing with thousands of diverse institutions making any concrete assumptions is dicey. The point is that churches don't currently account for the extra expense that taxation would impose upon them. The apparatus used for financial decision-making would be totally upended, throwing the system into a state of flux. Hayd doesn't take this point seriously, but all serious businesses take precaution to avoid unnecessary instability. We don't know for sure what taxing religions would look like, but we can ascertain that they would be harmed ON THE MARGINS. I encourage everyone to go back to my opening case and reread my impacts, which are quite substantial. Nothing Hayd has to offer comes even close to outweighing what I bring to the table. II. Economic Benefits The progression of this argument tells you all you really need to know about the resolution. Hayds $71 billion has slowly been whittled down to 10% of what it once was. This is a case study in how all of the supposed benefits of taxing religions fall apart when subjected to close scrutiny. The only impact Hayd has left is the $7 billion or so that he says he'll get from property taxes. Except he won't because like I already said, many institutions will close down rather than manage such a large tax burden. Hayd argues that this money will be used for charity. First, you're still getting less money for charity overall because when you remove the non-profit status of churches you cannot stop them from keeping their incomes rather than donating them. I'm sure that many would continue to donate, but there are enough unscrupulous people out there (and far more money contributed to charity from the "income" pool) to more than make up for any gains that Hayd gets. But the most important thing to realize about his argument about using this money for charity is that it will not be used for that purpose. He has offered literally no reason to believe that the government would earmark the money for this purpose, and considering how property taxes are collected by municipalities I'm not sure how it would even be possible for the government to do this. He says that he's allowed to make a "plan" to affirm the resolution, but that's absurd if the plan isn't feasible. His plan could just as easily claim that the government would invest the money into a portfolio that would return 100x the money invested. Such investments exist. Would it be fair to claim that the government would be able to do something like this? No. And similarly, you can't assume that the money goes to charity. In reality, the money would go to municipalities where it would be a small drop in their buckets. Refer back to the impacts stated in my original case. While the benefits of Hayd's plan are distributed over tens of thousands of municipalities and thus diminished, the negatives are all centralized. The Catholic Church is the second largest employer in the United States. Subjecting them to billions of dollars in taxes means that many of those jobs are going to vanish. III. Church and StateThis point alone wins me the debate. Under Hayds framework, there would only have to be one instance where a politician was unduly influenced by a religious donor or endorser for the public good to be harmed and for me to gain an impact. We cannot forget that an endorsement from the Catholic Church would swing literally any presidential election. The results for 2016 are in, and once again Catholics were a pretty closely divided group. Trump won 52% of them, and Hillary won 45%[1]. Catholics represented nearly a quarter of all voters in an election where the popular vote was virtually tied. Say an endorsement from the Catholic Church would flip 20% of these voters either way. That would be the equivalent of a 5 point swing, enough to change the result of all but one of the past five elections[2]. In reality, the impact would probably be far larger. This is the power that Hayd will give to the Catholic Church. Not to mention the numerous legislative seats that could be flipped even more easily. All it takes is ONE TIME for the political opinion of the Catholic Church (or whichever religious institution won the race for a politician) to conflict with the common good for their to be an impact. Except this will happen all the time. If you want a Christian dominionism vote Pro, otherwise preserve the integrity of the state by keeping it separate from the church. All hail President Trump. Vote Con.1. . http://www.nationalreview.com...2. . https://en.wikipedia.org...