Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

montreal.ctvnews.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 335 posts

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#131

Post by caiob »

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…

This is the kind of hate speech that should be banned from HN. But it’s left-friendly, so it won’t.

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#132

Post by lightgreen »

Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #74
lightgreen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t have to be charities. It should be enough if they are nonprofit (which most churches are I hope).

No one really knows since they don't have to tell anyone how they get money or how they spend them

It doesn’t matter because in order to get nonprofit status they’d need to fill some forms explaining how it is managed, financial statements, maybe perform external audit if they are large enough etc. If they are not willing to do that work, they won’t be eligible for nonprofit tax exemption.

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#133

Post by madaxe_again »

onetimemanytime wrote: post #117
hrktb wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What has survived millennia “as it is”? The United States? It was founded scarcely three centuries ago. The Christian church? Ever hear of the reformation, of Calvin, of Protestantism? I.e. one of the main reasons the United States exists?

It absolutely has not survived millennia. What you call your Christian church today would be unrecognisable to the faithful of a century ago, never mind two, or five, or ten, or twenty. Or are you acknowledging that Christianity is the cult of Mithras, and that it’s still a death cult?

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#134

Post by mmglr »

seesawtron wrote: post #108
mmglr wrote: post #72

IMO this post should not be on HN. Per the guidelines [1] "stories about politics" are off-topic. I would consider this political for obvious reasons. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Here's the complete guideline: "Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon" Did you purposefully leave out the full sentence? I would argue it is/was a new phenomenon. Nevertheless, would like to hear why you think HN should be exempt from political discussion anyways? We see thought-provoking discussions here each day. This is one of the positive aspe…

I wasn’t intending to be malicious by leaving out the full sentence.

Fair point about being a new phenomenon.

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#135

Post by juskrey »

ranman wrote: post #122
stormdennis wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in the southern United States and experienced all manner of churches. They’re universally bad. How many churches are you an expert on, exactly?

Well I was raised by a famous “pastor” who traveled around and “preached” to both receptive and dismissive congregations across the US. I experienced more churches than most people. I’m telling you this whole Christianity thing is a scam. sudo apt-get remove religion It’s a mental cancer.

Look, you were raised by fraudster, to begin with, and have seen only fraud. The whole Western modern humanism (which we like so much) is based on Christianity.

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#136

Post by stormdennis »

Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #114
stormdennis wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

St Vincent de Paul is the one I'm most familiar with. Time and again you hear accounts from people who were refused welfare for one reason or another and turned in despair to the SVP. They're not an alternative but they are invaluable to the people who fall through the cracks in society. They rely on donations from churchgoers and all are unpaid volunteers.

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#137

Post by dmitriid »

onetimemanytime wrote: post #117
hrktb wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It has survived millennia.

By "millennia" you mean "at most 300 years, maybe"?

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#138

Post by tikhonj »

LatteLazy wrote: post #124

The issue with this is always the same: which taxes ddo you want them to pay? Since most churches don't make a profit in the strict accounting sense, their won't be much Corp tax. And (AFAIK) they already pay payroll taxes (the main place church money. You could maybe tighten that up and make sure everyone is declaring benefits (use of the private jet) properly. But the USA just made that whole mess much more generou…

Given the absolutely incredible amount of real estate churches own, I imagine property taxes would be the big one.

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#139

Post by ownagefool »

onetimemanytime wrote: post #96
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?

>> 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.

Churches in the UK own property that they lease, such as expensive business high steet stores.

Re: Montreal is taxing churches (2017)

#140

Post by ranman »

Bayart wrote: post #126
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…

>I grew up in the southern United States That explains it. Your only experience with Christianity is with the oddest strains of it. I see that stuff pretty often with American "atheists". What they refer to as church feels like a fever dream, or something entirely alien. >Anyone who thinks, believes, or sells otherwise? You’re a lunatic. I disagree. You disagree with me, so you're insane.

Ive also traveled all over the planet and see versions of Christianity-lite or “Islam-lite”.

It’s still mental cancer. Believing in an imaginary sky god in 2020 is a mental health crisis. It’s absolutely absurd.

The scientologists who think that life was seeded by aliens have more to stand on than Christians do.

You can’t even have a rational debate with a religious person because they will just fall back on “faith”

Post reply on HN