ebamma: Religious bodies are not
money-making ventures
stricto sensu. The
traditional churches, i.e.
the Catholic Church and
the Anglican Church, have
remained largely
conservative with respect
to the commercialisation
of religion. But some of
the prosperity churches
have to pay tax because
they are smiling to the
banks. For example, the
Pope doubles as the Head
of the Roman Catholic
Church worldwide and a
Head of State but he flies
the Alitalia Airline, the
Italian commercial airline.
The same goes for the
head of the Anglican
Communion, the
Archbishop of Canterbury.
But today, there is a craze
among the leaders of the
prosperity churches for
private jets. At home and
abroad, they pay
prohibitive fees for
parking the jets at local
and international airports.
Since they earn fat
incomes, they should pay
tax to the state for
development. It is unjust
and illegal to tax the poor
congregants, while multi-
billionaire pastors or
bishops are not subjected
to any form of taxation.
Many of us attended
missionary schools and
received treatment in
hospitals founded by
churches. The fees were
largely cheap and
affordable. But today, the
secondary schools and
universities established by
prosperity churches charge
tuition fees on commercial
basis. There is nothing
religious in those centres
of commerce. It is so bad
that the children of poor
members of the
congregation, who are
even exceptionally
brilliant, are driven away
from such institutions on
ground of poverty. My
wife was on the board of
one of those universities.
She pleaded that the
children of the poor be
given scholarship or made
to pay substantially
reduced fees. She was
asked not to bring
radicalism to the church.
She had to withdraw from
the board.
Happily, Bishop Hassan
Kukah and some religious
leaders have spoken
against the primitive
accumulation of wealth by
their colleagues. If
religious leaders make
money from their business
outfits, they should pay
taxes.
If a church is so rich to the
extent of presenting a jet
as birthday gift to its
pastor, it should be able to
pay appropriate taxes
commensurate with its
status as a rich religious
centre. It is clearly stated
in several parts of the Holy
Bible that tithes are for
taking care of the poor
and the priests, as well as
Levites who minister unto
the Lord. Tithes are not
supposed to be diverted
for the establishment of
commercial farms,
bakeries and other
businesses.

ebamma: Falana is on point here, i once heard that winners chapel headquarters makes atleast 10million naira weekly, me thinks the government should tax that money since many of this churches are not involved in charity, even their school's tuition fees are not subsidised, so that their poor members can afford it.

nlMediator: ^^^
The logic of your position is easily refutable. The fact that taxes are not levied does not translate to endorsement. It simply reflects public policy that accepts the important role of the non-taxable entities to the society. In the US, churches are not taxed. But many for-profit businesses are not taxed either, if they choose certain organizational forms. General partnerships, limited artnerships, limited liability partnerships, limited liability companies and even some corporations ("S" Corp) pay no taxes even when they rake in millions of dollars in profit. By your logic, because big accounting and law firms or the Heinz ketch-up group are organized as partnerships and thus exempt from taxes, government is somehow endorsing them and forcing people who do not believe in their products to be subsidizing them? Maybe, you should launch a fruitless campaign to make them pay entity-level taxes.

Churches provide valuable services to the society. The state would be spending more money to fight crimes, if more people were not in church and as a result staying away from evil. Of course, the churches are not doing a perfect job. But it is hard to deny that many religious people are influenced by their beliefs to adopt a lifestyle that saves the society money in terms of crime control, maintenance of law and order, drug rehabilitation, therapy for depression, etc.

And let's quit fooling ourselves that a lot of roads and other infrastructure in Nigeria are built through taxes. An overwhleming amount of the budget of the government at all levels is funded through oil money, which accounts for about 80% or so of government revenues. When we have a tax-dependent society, like many organized societies, which also forces politicians to be accountable to the tax payers, we can have a meaningful dialogue about taxation of religious institutions. For now, it's premature and a waste of valuable time.

Evil Brain:
Not taxing churches is exactly equivalent to funding them. There is no material difference between giving somebody free money and giving them free services. The whole point of money is to exchange it for goods or services. If churches had to pay for their own police and roads and water, they'd be spending huge amounts of cash which their pastors are presently pocketing. All the things that the government provides cost money. All people and every other type of of organisation pay for them and so should the church.
There is absolutely no evidence that people who attend church are less likely to commit crimes, or use drugs. That is just bullshït christian propaganda. There is no correlation between number or size if churches and crime rate. Actually, more religious communities tend to have more crime (also more violent crime, more poverty, more illiteracy, less education, more teen pregnancy, more abortions, lower life expectancy, worse health indices, and more of pretty much every bad thing you can think of). Churches directly harm society by opposing science education, women's rights, religious freedom as well as destroying their members capacity for critical thinking.
The fact that the government makes most of its money from oil doesn't reduce the need to tax churches. Even if it was only 1 kobo we were losing by not taxing them, that's still less money for roads and schools and hospitals all of which are more important than the voodoo nonsense churches spend their money on. Also, not taxing churches puts then at an unfair advantage over individuals and other organisations. For instance, it allows them to buy up huge tracts of land which they can own free of property taxes. Religious institutions now own 7% of all the habitable land on the planet and they are doing nothing useful with it. And most annoyingly, the useless pastors that control these churches also don't pay taxes on their income, their houses or their private jets.
Religious institutions are the people who run them are nothing but a bunch of free riders and parasites. They should pay tax just like everybody else.

Joagbaje:
You can't tax churches for donations they Recieve . If you must tax churches then you must tax mosques too.

But taxation can only take place on church businesses . For example if a church runs commercial transport services , schools, hotel, banks , airline etc . Because those are for commercial purpose . They can be treated like any other company . But if for money given in church as donation it's untaxable .

Joagbaje:
You can't tax churches for donations they Recieve . If you must tax churches then you must tax mosques too.

But taxation can only take place on church businesses . For example if a church runs commercial transport services , schools, hotel, banks , airline etc . Because those are for commercial purpose . They can be treated like any other company . But if for money given in church as donation it's untaxable .

Logicboy03:


Only charities should be able to avoid tax. If your church is doing anything other than charity, it should be taxed


Same thing with mosques and temples

ebamma: Apart from the catholics and maybe the anglicans, other churches i know about are no charities,many of this Nuclear family churches springing up daily are businesses, which only exist to make a man and his wife and family richer

nlMediator:

Not taxing churches is subsidizing them only if you accept that you're also subsidizing PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte & Touche, Baker & McKenzie and numerous other firms that gross billions of dollars in revenue annually. I didn't see where you made such an assertion. Until you do, your argument about churches and subsidy is baseless. And just as you insist that churches be taxed, you should also argue that these firms be subject to taxes. But you conveniently ignore that.

I did not say that there is a correlation between the number or size of churches and crime rate. I said that going to church has kept many people from crime and harmful behavior, such as drugs and alcohol. That there are people in church that indulge in such behavior or people outside the church that do not indulge in such behavior does not negate it. Even if it’s only one person that’s helped by a church, that amounts to money saved to the society. If your argument, however, is that nobody is ever steered from evil by religion, then it wouldn’t make sense to continue with this discussion.

Unless you’re completely ignorant of Nigeria’s fiscal posture, you should know that Nigeria is notoriously dependent on non-tax revenues for running the economy. [snip] Worse still, even in societies like the US and Canada where tax revenues largely fund government, churches continue to enjoy tax-exempt status.

Joagbaje:
You can't tax churches for donations they Recieve . If you must tax churches then you must tax mosques too.

Logicboy03:
Thank you. All catholic churches engage in charity. But many have other services that arent charity. The charity side should be left while other business eg catholic book shop, rosary sales, printing etc should be taxed

Evil Brain:

Why the hell can't we tax churches for donations? Cash gifts to individuals and corporations are taxable so why should churches be different? And I agree that we should also tax mosques. And not just on their income, all of them should pay the same property tax as everybody else.



Even the Catholic church spends a relatively small amount of its earnings on real charity work. Most goes to maintaining church structures, paying staff and proselytizing. What tends to happen is that the proselytizing gets rebranded as charity work when it clearly isn't.

If your local Guru Maraji shrine were to build a primary school where kids are constantly indoctrinated with Guru Maraji beliefs, I doubt is anybody would say that was charity or want it subsidized by government. Why is it different when the catholics do it?

Evil Brain:
All of those companies are required to pay tax. If you feel they aren't paying enough, then you can start a new thread about that but don't pretend that they are getting the same free ride as churches.
My argument is that there's not a shred of evidence that religion has any overall positive effect on the amount of harmful behavior engaged in by its members. Until you can show us some, please keep your church propaganda to yourself.
I already dealt with the oil vs tax issue in my last post. Try reading that again. And pointing to the US and Canada is a nursery school debating tactic. Just because other children in school wet their bed doesn't make it okay for you to do it. Churches in US enjoy all sorts of illegal privileges due to their overbearing influence and the lack of opposition to them in the past. But that is slowly changing.

nlMediator:

No, those companies are not required to pay - and do not pay any - income tax in the US. Your assumption that churches in the US and Canada don't pay income taxes because of their influence holds little water when you can't answer why for-profit businesses organized as partnershis, LLCs and S corporations enjoy the same privillege. Again, I mention these countries because the practice of exempting religious institutions from tax is similar. Besides, if your argument that churches are enjoying a free ride at the expense of tax payers had any merit, it would be more applicabe to those countries (US, Canada) where there are genuine tax payers who are financing the government, unlike Nigeria. Yet, nobody has seriously considered the proposal to tax churches because it lacks merit, seeing the important social functions that churches play. Sorry I had to spell it out and repeat myself again.

nlMediator:

No, those companies are not required to pay - and do not pay any - income tax in the US. Your assumption that churches in the US and Canada don't pay income taxes because of their influence holds little water when you can't answer why for-profit businesses organized as partnershis, LLCs and S corporations enjoy the same privillege. Again, I mention these countries because the practice of exempting religious institutions from tax is similar. Besides, if your argument that churches are enjoying a free ride at the expense of tax payers had any merit, it would be more applicabe to those countries (US, Canada) where there are genuine tax payers who are financing the government, unlike Nigeria. Yet, nobody has seriously considered the proposal to tax churches because it lacks merit, seeing the important social functions that churches play. Sorry I had to spell it out and repeat myself again.

Evil Brain:
I don't know where you are getting this idea that those companies aren't require to pay tax. FYI, they are taxed on their profits, their capital gains and their landed property. The fact that they have the money and the lack of morals to lawyer their way out of most of their obligations is irrelevant to our discussion.
You can't use the corporate tax loopholes in the pro-big business, anti-poor people US as a justification for not taxing churches.
Try again.

nlMediator:
It is obvious you do not know what you’re talking about. Any business organized as a partnership, limited liability company or S corporation does not pay any income tax to the US government. It has nothing to do with loopholes. See the link below from the State of New York, which says, inter alia: “Income tax responsibilities - A partnership:
• does not pay income tax directly on its income. The partnership's income is passed through to its partners and is included as income on each partner's income tax or franchise tax return."
http://www.tax.ny.gov/pit/efile/partneridx.htm
Loopholes will pertain to corporations (C corp) which are required to pay a corporate income tax. Those can utilize loopholes, credits and deductions to reduce their tax liability. But the big law and accounting firms, which are almost invariably organized as partnerships, and many other businesses now organized as LLCs and PLLCs do not have an income tax liability in the first place. So, loopholes have no place in the discussion.
And why are you talking about capital gains tax or property tax? Let’s settle the income tax question first. Since you do not seem to know how the income tax system works, it is unlikely that you’ll know what to say when we shift to capital gains and property taxes. For a start, tithe and offerings paid in church are income, not captal gains nor are they subject to property tax even if the church were to be a private business that is taxed on its income.

Evil Brain:

Partnerships are nor legal entities therefore, income corporate tax cannot be levied against them. Instead, income tax is levied against the individual partners in the same manner as a sole proprietorship. This is solely because of the nature of a partnership and not because any body thinks they shouldn't be taxed. The reason why law firms are usually partnerships is because law firms are full of lawyers and lawyers tend to know how to lawyer their way to paying as little tax as possible. The downside is that they lose then limited liability that corporations have, but they can lawyer their way around that as well.

Churches aren't partnerships, they don't operate like partnerships and the pastors who effectively own them don't pay income tax on the church's' earnings like partners do. There is no other reason for comparing them to partnerships except the vain hope that I'd be ignorant on the topic and concede even though I'm right.

So your argument basically is that certain types of businesses in the US don't pay income tax, therefore churches shouldn't be taxed at all? Really? You want to use your minimal knowledge of the NYC tax code to obfuscate how ridiculous your argument is abi? Nice attempt, but it didn't work.

Try again.

Evil Brain:
Partnerships are not legal entities therefore, corporate income tax cannot be levied against them. Instead, income tax is levied against the individual partners in the same manner as a sole proprietorship. This is solely because of the nature of a partnership and not because anybody thinks they shouldn't be taxed. The reason why law firms are usually partnerships is because law firms are full of lawyers and lawyers tend to know how to lawyer their way to paying as little tax as possible. The downside is that they lose the limited liability that corporations have, but they can lawyer their way around that as well.
Churches aren't partnerships, they don't operate like partnerships and the pastors who effectively own them don't pay income tax on the church's' earnings like partners do. There is no other reason for comparing them to partnerships except the vain hope that I'd be ignorant on the topic and concede even though I'm right.
So your argument basically is that certain types of businesses in the US don't pay income tax, therefore churches shouldn't be taxed at all? Really? You want to use your minimal knowledge of the NYC tax code to obfuscate how ridiculous your argument is abi? Nice attempt, but it didn't work.
Try again.

nlMediator: ^^^

Thank you for the opportunity to expose your ignorance and the ignorance of your ilk who argue for policy change withh little understanding of the policy's raison d'etre. There's no point wasting time. Maybe, you can send more knowledgeable people from your camp and we can continue. It's now you want to send me to dollarland when you you should have done that earlier rather than demonstrate your lack of familiarity with the issues in question. That's part of our problem as Nigerians: it's hard to admit that we don't know some things. At least, now you know that there are many organizational forms that do not pay taxes, not just churches. Chase after those ones before you start harrassing churches. And btw, pastors pay taxes on their income, just as partners do. Guess, you didn't know that one too.

Logicboy03:
You have no idea what you are talking about but you want to defend your theiving churches by all means.
I didnt want to talk much since I believed that Evil Brain handled the issue well......
You claimed that partnerships dont pay taxes? That is quite irrelevant and silly. They partners still pay income taxes from the individual income they make from the partnership. How is that not a business tax? It is still an income tax- just collected differently.
The only organisational forms that are tax exempt are charities and it should be that way.

nlMediator:

You're even more ignorant than your fine brother and "partner" here! So, in your world, there is no distinction between the tax treatment of partnerships and the tax treatment of corporations because partners ultimately pay taxes? To you that's all business tax? Plain rubbish. If that were the case, why did the law go through the trouble of having 2 different provisions for the various entities, since in your book, it all amounts to the same thing? Listen, if 2 people form a partnership and 2 other people form a corporation. At the end of the year, both businesses earn the same amount of profits. The profits are then distributed to the owners. The owners of the corporation will end up paying far more taxes on that profit than the partners, even when all the individuals are in the same tax bracket and have the same individual deductions (number of children, etc). Why? because the partnership does not pay taxes. That's why some people choose to rganize their business as a partnership and expose themselves to personal liability when they can choose a corporation and enjoy limited liability protection. It's tax-driven.

The treatment of the church and partnership are essentially the same at the entity level. Using the same example of 2 business owners, let's assume they formed a church instead. At the end of the year, the church has the same amount of money left over, i.e. profits. Then, these two owners (pastors) share the money between themseves, as salaries. Their tax obligation would be exactly the same as the partners who shared the profits of their partnership.

The advantgae the church enjoys is that it may not distribute any income to the pastors (owners) and not be bothered to pay taxes whereas partners are obligated to pay taxes whether or not there is a distribution to them. But if your concern is that the pastors are pocketing the money, then there's no difference because the church has already made the distribution (the pocketed money) upon which a tax is due from the pastors.

The key queston that none of you seem smart enought to answer as I have asked repeatedly: why are partnerships exempt from income tax? Claiming that they are not exempt and thus are essentially the same as corporations tax-wise is what is silly and uneducated.

nlMediator: For those who care about the math, I will illustrate this way.
Name of organization: ABC Partnership
Owners: Mr. A and Mrs. B
Gross revenue in 2012: 150,000 Naira
Expenses (staff, utilities, etc): 50,000 Naira
Profit : 100,000
Entity Tax rate: 0%
Entity Tax: 0 Naira
Profit distribution to owners: 50,000 Naira each
Tax bracket for each owner: 20%
Income tax for each owner: 10,000 Naira
Money left for each owner: 40,000 Naira
Name of organization: ABC Limited (Corporation)
Owners: Mr. A and Mrs. B
Gross revenue in 2012: 150,000 Naira
Expenses (staff, utilities, etc): 50,000 Naira
Profit : 100,000 Naira
Corporate Tax rate: 30%
Corporate Tax: 30,000 Naira
Profit after tax: 70,000 Naira
Profit distribution to owners: 35,000 Naira each
Tax bracket for each owner: 20%
Income tax for each owner: 7,000 Naira
Money left for each owner: 28,000 Naira
Name of organization: ABC Church
Owners: Mr. A and Mrs. B (Pastors)
Gross revenue in 2012: 150,000 Naira
Expenses (staff, utilities, etc): 50,000 Naira
“Profit “: 100,000 Naira
Entity Tax rate: 0%
Entity Tax: 0 Naira
“Profit” distribution to owners (what each pastor takes after expenses): 50,000 Naira each
Tax bracket for each owner: 20%
Income tax for each owner: 10,000 Naira
Money left for each owner: 40,000 Naira
Can somebody tell me the difference between the partnership and the church here, in terms of what the owners gain and what they pay to the government? Zero difference. But people will be harassing churches and ignore businesses that pay no taxes. And can people see the huge difference between what the owners of the partnership keep and what is kept by the owners of the corporation?