They already pay FICA taxes, taxes on investments, etc. The organization itself is tax exempt (like any other non-profit) and I don't think they pay property taxes.

I think what we have now is pretty fair. I understand that mega churches are a real pain in the ass but we shouldn't dictate policy based on outliers.



This doesn't bother me at all.

This post was edited by thundercock on Apr 14 2020 02:22pm

These loans may be forgivable on a whole range of stipulations.

Not necessarily.I'm not a member of the church i go to but if i needed to go talk to a counselor there i could do so without a doubt.

Is that counselor paid by the institution? If yes, why are you denying him necessary aid to feed himself when government involuntarily has shut down his place of work?

So there's a counselor that works for a mosque and makes 50k and there is one that works at some private practice and makes 50k. How is it not discriminatory to give one loans and let the other one fend for himself based purely on religion?

2 factors i think are relevant,

1.) about 10% of american churches are "mega churches", aka a congregation of 1,000 or more people
2.) church services against govt orders have been a notorious spreader of the virus

these two facts aren't related, nor do they make the case for either side imo

In the article it says that the loans would be largely forgivable, and that they wouldn't have to pay back the full amount. I wonder how much that diminishes the loan-ness of the "loan"?

It's the same stipulation placed on small businesses and the 'largely' depends on many different things, it's not a given. Why do you guys have issue with church workers getting the same treatment as secular ones? If you have a problem with the small business loan forgiveness, is it for secular businesses as well or just the religious-tied ones?

I think that's the dilemma. How do we best reconcile the separation of church and state while also caring for people and the social good? I don't have an answer to that personally. All I can say is that I disagree with my fellow atheists who advocate taxing churches.

Who you think this is gonna help - local parish churches that are pillars of the community

Who this aid will go to - keeping Kenneth Copeland's private jets fuelled and ready to jet off to St Lucia for a convenient pilgrimage

Churches in some respects are very similar to non for profits. It doesn't make sense to tax them since much of that capital flows through the organization for some good cause. Now i'm not a fan of some pastors making 200k and driving around 100k cars but it's a evil i live with because i know on the aggregate churches donate a ton of money to really good causes.

For example in my city, the homeless shelter is funded partially by church donations, food drives, etc. On the aggregate Christian organizations in the US and Canada give billions in aid to places like Africa. It actually outstrips governmental aid to those places. When i used to go to youth services, many years ago, we had a collection that 100% went to buying out sex slaves in east Asia and giving them a safe space to get back on their feet, i remember my church's youth raised like 30 grand. Essentially, the money would go towards these swat-type raids, with like 5000/raid.

Church and state are separate and this issue is entirely a different debate. We shouldn't discriminate and deny people the loans they need just because of the place they work at. That faith counselor depending on that paycheck has the same rights as other counselors.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Apr 14 2020 03:12pm

Bail out the churches. If we can bail out the car companies, banks, etc, we can bail them out.

We need to rethink taxation on certain types of churches....a difference between commercial churches like Joel Olstein's vs the neighborhood Methodist church etc.

The Constitution prevents laws from respecting establishments of religion. I think the only problem here would be if it played favorites.

This post was edited by Skinned on Apr 14 2020 03:16pm

Thank you for pointing out another one of the apparently non existent violations of the constitutions I speak about.