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Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

montreal.ctvnews.ca

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Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#111

Post by Smaug123 »

ranman wrote: post #97

Everyone commenting about how great churches are? You’re absolutely delusional. The gross majority of these organizations are bigoted and racist. I grew up in the southern United States and experienced all manner of churches. I don’t care how great your church is. Give me 20 minutes with your congregation and I’ll find the racists and bigots. These assholes promote terrible mental and physical health. They don’t beli…

> Give me 20 minutes with your congregation and I’ll find the racists and bigots.

I can do better than that: I can do that with any group, not just a church congregation!

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#112

Post by juskrey »

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #105
juskrey wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was born in the exUSSR and there, if you want to find the most apocalyptic, neglected, boring and useless building which lives by renting out itself to some strange businesses (if at all), you can ask for the local community center.

I thought that would be the reply, but a community centre isn't a building but a function (that happens to need a building), but they're not the same.

Exactly that. Community centers there are useless and only work as a cheap building for rent

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#113

Post by enaaem »

Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #64
earthscienceman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such an important point. It's going to go against the grain at hackernews, but taxing churches in the US is a terrible idea. If you wanted to further the divide between the "liberal city"/"conservative rural" American cultures, this would be a great way to do it. If you grew up in a rural area of the flyover states you would know that churches form the backbone of these rural communities. For example, the chu…

Maybe you could earmark the collected taxes for creating secular alternatives? Or maybe create a system where people don't have to rely on churches and rich people for charity.

Churches provide much more than just money. Solace, peace, love, community etc... I'd say this is more important than money.

I used to be a Christian. There are a lot of bad sides of Christianity and that is why I left. But it does help many people and after studying Buddhism I understand how the right approach to Christianity can bring a lot of peace to believers:

Unconditional love. Many people grew up made to feel they had to earn their parents' love.

Letting go of control. You can't control everything in life. Whatever is going to happen is up to God now.

Forgiveness. When people ask for God's forgiveness, it helps them to forgive themselves.

Gratitude.

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#114

Post by Galaxeblaffer »

stormdennis wrote: post #89
Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you could earmark the collected taxes for creating secular alternatives? Or maybe create a system where people don't have to rely on churches and rich people for charity.

We already have secular alternatives, state welfare in many countries. A worse value for money system would be hard to imagine, populated with clock watching, work-to-rule types who actively use bureaucracy to avoid work.

So your telling me that churches are value for money? Could you give an example of one of these state welfare alternatives?

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#115

Post by ggggtez »

dropit_sphere wrote: post #83
ggggtez wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where people connect with the spiritual world In the USA, this is quickly becoming an obsolete understanding of religion. Regular church attendance is down from 70% to just over 50% in the last 20 years, according to Gallup. People are leaving the churches. The real question is what will replace them. If people need community, build community centers. There are other solutions that do not rely on continuing to prov…

> obsolete >just over 50% k (I feel like the glib single-character response stands on its own, but more verbosely: yeah, the trend isn't good, but a) there's no reason to assume it's linear, "fair-weather believers" is a thing, and b) I'm not a TIOBE follower, but let's say java use was 70% 20 years ago, and down to just over 50% today. Is "obsolete" the word you'd use?)

> this is quickly becoming an obsolete understanding of religion

Yes, I stand by my words. If you read them again, you'll see you are arguing with something I didn't say.

If 29% of religious people have left the church (50/70=71% still attend church)... then that is a major shift. It would be foolish to continue with previous assumptions about the role of churches going forward without taking into account how religious people are changing their behaviors.

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#116

Post by thefounder »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #92
jsmeaton wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you only tax profits? If a church isn't making any, then there'd be nothing to tax?

It's not just about the amounts, but the time tax, and the effort tax. Maintaining tax records is not zero-effort.

Why should the non-religious non profit organisations have to maintain tax recods then?

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#117

Post by onetimemanytime »

hrktb wrote: post #104
onetimemanytime wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Don't you only tax profits? If a church isn't making any, then there'd be nothing to tax? Land and buildings for one could be taxed. Churches bought or were given land ages ago, before there was a Manhattan or Boston, as we today know it. Go ahead and pay property tax on land worth $250 Million when you barely make income to keep the lights on.

A solution to this is to give back the land to the local city and have it handled as cultural heritage, with an authorization to practice religious activities at specific times, but it’s governed by local administration overall. That’s how some cathedrals are managed in europe for instance.

A better solution is to keep it as it is. It has survived millennia. It's their land and states can renege their promises.

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#118

Post by [deleted] »

Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #101
moralestapia wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Or maybe create a system where people don't have to rely on churches and rich people for charity. Grow up, there is no utopia and whatever works already is better than nothing.

Yeah, let's just give up on making the world a better place. We might never reach Utopia, but we can for damn sure get closer especially if we free ourselves from dogmatic thinking. Do you really want to settle for better than nothing?

[deleted]

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#119

Post by juskrey »

cosmodisk wrote: post #106
juskrey wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should see some Soviet community centers before thinking they can replace anything. USA is highly uneven. In some states like Florida you can see churches on every other corner, and they are very active and developing, serving not only as community centers, but also as halls, child day care, hospitals, schools, galleries etc. No freaking "community center" can replace that.

>You should see some Soviet community centers before thinking they can replace anything The concept was good and they did work. In many towns, it's usually the only place where you could run cultural evens,some more important community gatherings and so on. What did happen once the Soviet occupation ended, was the lack of funding of these places. The town I grew up in, 15k population and the culture center large enou…

Churches in USA are not nearly the same as in most other countries. They are funded bottom up and also have to survive by serving their community well. If you need to ask for some community center funded from some abstract government, you don't have the local community, at the first place.

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#120

Post by ThePadawan »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #100
ThePadawan wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, so all churches doing charity work now set up a non-for-profit. Problem solved?

AFAIK, the difference would pretty much be that they actually have (pretty loose) limits on what they can spend money on, and on endorsing electoral candidates - and they'd have to publish information about their finances. If you argued that religion was not an intrinsic social benefit then you might start saying that some of what they do is not non-profit work. That could get interesting.

> AFAIK, the difference would pretty much be that they actually have (pretty loose) limits on what they can spend money on, and on endorsing electoral candidates - and they'd have to publish information about their finances.

I'm not from the US, so I 100% expect those things from churches already. These sound like completely reasonable demands I would have on any public institution.

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