Debate: Churches ought to pay taxes

The resolution of this debate can only be fulfilled by the government passing legislation. This is because taxation is inherently governmental. Governments, societies, individuals, and all other forms of entities, act (or ought to act) on a utilitarian basis: things that have more benefits than harms ought to be retained, whilst those that have more harms than benefits ought to be abolished. Goodness is determined by the ratio of desirability to undesirability. This is because every entity or being intrinsically seeks to maximize their desirable states (read: pleasure) and minimize their undesirable states (read: suffering.) Things that overall prevent suffering while promoting pleasure are thus good for that being. Because we know that other sentient beings undergo this as well, we can *empathize* with them and thus seek to extend the same principle (preventing suffering and promoting pleasure) to them. Without empathy morality cannot exist, it is contingent. Given that morality in and of itself is a system used to determine whether entities should or should not do something, morality can be used to determine whether a government should or should not make churches pay taxes. I find that the benefits of taxing churches outweigh the costs associated with it, and thus I affirm the resolution. The first way in which church tax exemption brings a societal cost is through the US government being forced to defend itself in lawsuits over tax exemption status to certain institutions (such as Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and other controversial faiths.) Lawsuits against government entities require that the government spend money in order to defend themselves against the lawsuit. The amount of money required to do this is enormous. For example, Texas has spent $3.5 million defending themselves against voter ID lawsuits [1]. This same issue happens over interpretation of tax exemption laws for churches. This can be seen in the Church of Scientology’s numerous and year long lawsuits against the government wherein they can harness millions of dollars in funds; which the government then has to match. In the end, tax exemption law results in millions of dollars in lost money for the US government. My second argument is thus: churches are not like other (secular) not-for-profit charitable organizations. Churches’ primary goal is in the practice and spread of their religion, rather than charity like other non-religious tax exempt charitable organizations. Research has found that around 29% of the average church’s income is for charitable purposes, the rest is used for internal costs such as wages [2]. Other, secular charities though are able to do *more* good with their funds. For example, the Red Cross uses 92.1% of its income for helping people. A property tax on churches would raise around $71 billion dollars per year [3], while the commercial income tax would raise around $6.75 billion. (This is because the median congregation income is $60,000 [6], and thus the income tax bracket becomes $7,500 + 25% [8], meaning $22,500 payed in taxes per congregation. Given there are 300,000 congregations in America, that ends up being 6,750,000,000.) Reallocating money from churches, where only 29% of it would go to help people to secular charities where 92% of it will be used to help people, would be a massive impact on the effectiveness of charity. Significantly more people will be helped through charity. It is important to note the amount of money that $71 billion dollars is, as it is easy to just put it away as another number. $71 billion dollars is more than the top two wealthiest charities in the world combined [4]. Using all of this money for charity work rather than a fraction of it, as would happen without taxes, is a huge impact. Taxes on churches will also give more funds to local governments, and given that local governance is the most important government, the impact of this on people is substantial. Plus, George Washington said that, “I agree with...Ha...yd’s...argument that...churches…should pay taxes.” (1782) [10] Peace and Love [1] https://www.texastribune.org... [2] http://www.newsweek.com... [3] http://bigthink.com...\ [4] https://en.wikipedia.org... [5] http://www.taxpolicycenter.org... [6] http://www.ssc.wisc.edu... [7] http://www.taxpolicycenter.org... [8] https://en.wikipedia.org... [9] http://www.hup.harvard.edu... [10] https://www.amazon.com...;*Version*=1&*entries*=0&linkCode=sl1&tag=worst-products-ever-20&linkId=d6148e5e63820f864ff4057c05fc18e1