The headline reads: If the Churches Paid Taxes, Everyone Would Only Pay 3% Taxes
First off that's utter horsecrap. There is no "cost to the government from church exemptions. All it means is that the government doesn't take 71 billion dollars of money from people who have already been taxed because they gave money to their churches. Taxing that same money again is not only unfair, but it takes away from the charitable activities that the church already does. It's a propaganda ploy - appealing to personal greed to turn you against churches. The "video" offers no facts, only a clip of a wealthy looking fancy church which is supposed to make you angry. Their reasoning is all based on the idea that the government owns everything and anything they don't take from you is robbing from them.
Let's say the feds gave it all to "feeding the hungry", which they won't do and which by the way is one of the things the churches already do with that money. It won't all go to feeding the hungry. Between 40 and 60% of that money will get eaten up paying for the salaries, supplies, benefits and the buildings in which they have their cubicles for bureaucrats who mismanage the food benefits program and generate useless paperwork for each other; dribbling out what's left to people the government thinks "deserve" to receive food assistance and deny it to them the first time they lift their heads even a little bit above the poverty level.
But, the government reduces your food stamps as you make more money. That works out to virtually no transition period at all. They simply reduce your benefits so that you can't afford the added expense of working (travel, clothing, meals at work, etc.). In effect, the benefits reduction keeps you at or near the poverty level until the cut the benefits entirely. So, practically, there is no transition period. Instead, the government programs strategic reductions only serve to extend the time during which you remain at the poverty level.
Talk about glass ceilings! The gains we made with welfare to work back in the 90s have been virtually done away with in traditional "war on poverty" programs and with Obamacare, the glass ceiling was replaced with an iron one. On in which if you make a little extra some month you go from being on Medicaid to being offered a replacement policy on the Health Care Exchange that costs you more per month than you are making. And if you don't pay it, the IRS was going to make you pay a fine with money you don't actually have. Of course, they can always take your refund in April. How's that for a hidden tax. So basically, now if you want to rise above the poverty level, you have to accept that, for a time you will be paying to the government, more money than you make.
Of course this means you don't eat, you don't go to work because you can't afford it, and you can't pay the rent. So, it's better to remain safely below the poverty line where you are dependent on the government. And that, I think is the point. We are creating a dependent voting block that is is being programmed to accept extensive government intervention as the new normal.
Taxing churches will not save the government anything. There is no line item in the budget where the government pays churches to exist. There is only the gleam in the eye of some progressive Democrat looking for votes by creating another expensive government program that grows the size of government, gives it more power and hires more people to work for it.
Taxing is nothing more than a legalized form of systematized robbery from churches, supported by people who hate religion and would like to see religious institutions and people disappear from society. Christianity is the new progressive left's version of the Nazi's evil Jews. You will notice that no one is calling for the World Wildlife Fund, The Sierra Club or Media Matters to be taxed. Why pick on churches?
Because atheists don't like churches and the progressive socialist movement has been, at its heart, an anti-religion movement. They blame religion for all wars for instance, conveniently ignoring that the only time religions have had armies was when they were government religions. Governments wage war. Megalomaniac dictators, kings and emperors wage wars. Not too many pastors wage war, although some did during the American revolution and the Civil War, but that was about patriotism, not religion. One religion that does wage war is Islam, although to be fair, Islam forms a government first before it wages any kind of war other than terrorism.
Anyway, if someone tells you churches are stealing money from the government, ask them if the Red Cross is stealing from the government. How about your local art museums, zoos, your public schools, universities and wildlife rescue organizations? Are they stealing from the government too.
And how many times is it okay for the government to tax your income? Already they hit you for taxes on your business and then hit you again for taxes on your personal income from the same business and now my "progressive" friends want to take a chunk out of the money that has already been taxed at least twice just because I put it into the collection plate at church.
Here's the video with all its reasons why churches should be taxes. Decide for yourself.
https://www.facebook.com/disclosetv/videos/10155942312185628/
Let's say the feds gave it all to "feeding the hungry", which they won't do and which by the way is one of the things the churches already do with that money. It won't all go to feeding the hungry. Between 40 and 60% of that money will get eaten up paying for the salaries, supplies, benefits and the buildings in which they have their cubicles for bureaucrats who mismanage the food benefits program and generate useless paperwork for each other; dribbling out what's left to people the government thinks "deserve" to receive food assistance and deny it to them the first time they lift their heads even a little bit above the poverty level.
But, the government reduces your food stamps as you make more money. That works out to virtually no transition period at all. They simply reduce your benefits so that you can't afford the added expense of working (travel, clothing, meals at work, etc.). In effect, the benefits reduction keeps you at or near the poverty level until the cut the benefits entirely. So, practically, there is no transition period. Instead, the government programs strategic reductions only serve to extend the time during which you remain at the poverty level.
Talk about glass ceilings! The gains we made with welfare to work back in the 90s have been virtually done away with in traditional "war on poverty" programs and with Obamacare, the glass ceiling was replaced with an iron one. On in which if you make a little extra some month you go from being on Medicaid to being offered a replacement policy on the Health Care Exchange that costs you more per month than you are making. And if you don't pay it, the IRS was going to make you pay a fine with money you don't actually have. Of course, they can always take your refund in April. How's that for a hidden tax. So basically, now if you want to rise above the poverty level, you have to accept that, for a time you will be paying to the government, more money than you make.
Of course this means you don't eat, you don't go to work because you can't afford it, and you can't pay the rent. So, it's better to remain safely below the poverty line where you are dependent on the government. And that, I think is the point. We are creating a dependent voting block that is is being programmed to accept extensive government intervention as the new normal.
Taxing churches will not save the government anything. There is no line item in the budget where the government pays churches to exist. There is only the gleam in the eye of some progressive Democrat looking for votes by creating another expensive government program that grows the size of government, gives it more power and hires more people to work for it.
Taxing is nothing more than a legalized form of systematized robbery from churches, supported by people who hate religion and would like to see religious institutions and people disappear from society. Christianity is the new progressive left's version of the Nazi's evil Jews. You will notice that no one is calling for the World Wildlife Fund, The Sierra Club or Media Matters to be taxed. Why pick on churches?
Because atheists don't like churches and the progressive socialist movement has been, at its heart, an anti-religion movement. They blame religion for all wars for instance, conveniently ignoring that the only time religions have had armies was when they were government religions. Governments wage war. Megalomaniac dictators, kings and emperors wage wars. Not too many pastors wage war, although some did during the American revolution and the Civil War, but that was about patriotism, not religion. One religion that does wage war is Islam, although to be fair, Islam forms a government first before it wages any kind of war other than terrorism.
Anyway, if someone tells you churches are stealing money from the government, ask them if the Red Cross is stealing from the government. How about your local art museums, zoos, your public schools, universities and wildlife rescue organizations? Are they stealing from the government too.
And how many times is it okay for the government to tax your income? Already they hit you for taxes on your business and then hit you again for taxes on your personal income from the same business and now my "progressive" friends want to take a chunk out of the money that has already been taxed at least twice just because I put it into the collection plate at church.
Here's the video with all its reasons why churches should be taxes. Decide for yourself.
https://www.facebook.com/disclosetv/videos/10155942312185628/
Did you notice there were no reasons, other than a visceral reaction to someone having and expensive church building. Taking money from people is not a cost to the government. It's simply letting people keep what is already theirs and do with that money what they want to do. So I'll thank these collectivists to keep their hands out of my wallet and out of the church's offering plates. Be careful my "progressive" friends. Just because they say they are progressive, doesn't mean they are truly moving forward. We are, in fact, reversing course toward a revival of the two class system of the Dark Ages - noble leaders and peasants. The only other class is the soldier class and we know what they are used for. Even way back then, the noble leaders of governments pretty much left the church alone. When the government starts stealing from churches, though, it has truly gone beyond the pale.
And there beyond the pale my friend, lie the dragons in wait for us! And as one wry old philosopher so aptly put it, "Beware for thou are soft and crunchy and taste particularly good flambéed."
© 2017 by Tom king
© 2017 by Tom king
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