I am a bit surprised that churches are still eligible to be charities with all the related tax advantages. There was an interesting (but legal) situation here this week where it was disclosed that Canadian taxpayers have been heavily subsidizing BYU in the US.
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I poke because i love.
With respect to the Church of England I checked that out and basically they get a rebate on the VAT they pay on reapairs to facilities. From Wikipedia:
The LPWGS provides grants for qualifying work to churches which are equal to the amount of VAT paid for that work, thus alleviating the burden of VAT on the cost of maintaining churches. There is no other government financial support for the Church of England.
Depends on how you define “government financial support”. I would include income tax relief on personal donations to the Church of England as government financial support.
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That’s interesting about other countries. But, I wasn’t asking about other countries.
Your earlier post said that walking past a display on gov’t property doesn’t bother you because you don’t feel “forced to participate”.
I’m asking where you draw the “participation” line. Do you object to the government making cash payments to churches, even though you are not being forced to attend services?
Hmmm, to the tune of £750,000,000?
Also, there are 25 seats in the House of Lords reserved for bishops. We have no equivalent of that in the United States.
If Muslims were somehow able to win all 535 seats in Congress we would have an all-Muslim Congress. That’s not even theoretically possible in the UK.
Yes, I do. I said that in this thread.
Wow. Sounds like an unholy alliance to me.
That is 468 of the 750 million. One hundred eightenn million is the rebate of the VAT, The rest is comprised of grants to preserve property that is deemed to be of cultural and historical importance.
I was responding to your earlier post where you incorrectly said there was no financial support from the government other than VAT relief. Twig had corrected your earlier post and I am in agreement with her findings.
Ok, but the financial support that the Church of England receives is available to every other Church in England. The bishops in the House of Lords receive certain perks but those go to the bishops not the church. She seemed to imply that the Church of England received financing not available to other religions.
Noted, and my main concern is government financial support for ANY religious activity.
As a former church treasurer, I know how little of the donations going to a religious institution go to the “charitable” versus the “religious” part of their operations. I have no problem with tax deductions for their truly charitable activities and their related administrative costs but not for the religious ones. Why should any religion be subsidized through the tax system?
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Sorry, I missed that.
You know the next question:
What about using tax money to build the nativity scene on the courthouse lawn?
And, following up with Cooke’s point, what about an FIT deduction for contributions to religious organizations?
You probably know my opinion on that. A targeted tax deduction is financially equivalent to a direct payment. So I have the same answer as direct cash payments.
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Eh, they get the seats for the purpose of representing the church’s interests, so I disagree with your description.
I don’t know exactly how this works in every municipality of course. I do know that the White House has displays for Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan, Diwali, and probably more that I’m not aware of.
I think as long as the displays are reasonably representative it’s fine.
Along similar lines, I recall some controversy over the fact that state funding went to placing highway signage indicating the exits for both the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter in Kentucky. People cried “separation of church and state” but really, the state had clear guidelines that they would post signs for tourist attractions expected to get at least X visitors per year. And while I no longer recall what X is, the number of visitors for each of those attractions was expected to be many multiples of X, so they clearly met the threshold.
Anyway, maybe some similar guideline for holiday displays. If at least 3% of the population celebrates the holiday, set up a display. We could certainly quibble over whether 3% is the right number, but in my mind something along those lines is reasonable. And we don’t need displays for every minor holiday… maybe maximum of two holidays per religion??? (Yes, I realize that Hanukkah is a pretty minor holiday, religiously speaking, but due to the timing it’s become a bigger deal culturally.)
They get seats because they have had seats since the 1300’s. The House of Lords in the UK doesn’t really have a lot of power and the bishops within the House are insiginificant in terms of even influencing the limited authority of the House of Lords. If you can find an example of where they hav influenced public policy in the last 100 years I would like to see it.
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Close, but not exactly. The 468 million is cash payments directly from the government to the church, whereas what Cooke is describing is indirect (reduction of personal income taxes).
They do both represent a portion of what some donors give to the church though, so there is a similarity, certainly.
Regardless, I hadn’t realized that the UK had cut off most direct funding to the church. I’m trying to find out when that happened. Still, there is a complex history of government actually forming the church and essentially seizing the property (land, buildings, possessions) from the Roman Catholic Church. The national government decided on the church’s governance structure, and King Charles, England’s head of state, is also the head of the Church of England.
You could probably find House districts in the US for which that’s true as well. The point is that they have the seats. The fact that they happen to currently choose to mostly not use them doesn’t change the fact that they have them.
The Roman Catholic Church doesn’t get automatic representation in the House of Lords. Nor do Jews or Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists or atheists or other Protestant faiths. It’s a special carve-out for the Church of England.
It’s like saying that the money you have sitting in the bank is irrelevant because you’re not spending it. The point is that you could if you wanted to. It’s there for you when you need or want it.
Over the last five years the CofE received £468m in Gift Aid,
This is just a different mechanism to accomplish the same effect and it is available to all charities.
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