Hey, get your church out of my state
Seems Mike Pfleger (AKA Snuffy) is abusing his church’s non-profit tax status by putting up various billboards against guns that advocate legislation. Meanwhile, the IRS cracks down on the finances of churches who issue a pro-life message.
August 27th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
So. We started this thing called income tax. Churches, being protected by the First Amendment, didn’t think they should be paying these taxes, and they had a good case, IMO. However, in order to exempt churches, we are faced with the need to decide what is, and what is not, a church. Hence, we have a need for government approved churches, if we are to “protect” the First Amendment, which is of course in rather direct violation in the spirit, if not the letter, of the First Amendment.
We now have these government approved churches involved in political campaigning.
You see what happens don’t you, when just a little bit of socialism creeps into society– it demands a little bit more, and a little bit more, and a little bit more, ad infinitum, to a point where the insanity becomes deadly.
The solution, for starters, would be to grant churches a tax status equal to that of any other business, charity being the same inside a religion as outside one, and then let them do as they will. As it is, we now have .gov types calling churches and giving them, shall we say, “advice”.
August 27th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
Having actually dealt with this whole non-profit/lobbying issue every day for the last couple of years, I don’t see anything that indicates he’s crossing the line.
There is room for lobbying in a (c)3. It’s usually presumed to be at the 5-10% mark. (From what I gather, that seems to be based on how adventurous your lawyers are.) Looking at their other activities, I doubt that the cross that mark. Keep in mind that David is only looking when the church started picking on his activity. He’s not looking at the full picture.