One of the most interesting discussions we really need to talk about and see from different views and perspectives is the issue surrounding taxes and religious places, not just the church. Truth be told religion has become a way to make money unconventionally without being taxed and for the christian religion, a lot of people have taken advantage of it using it for their own selfish desires. You find people opening churches for business and even sell all sorts of spiritual services because they know they can not be taxed from it. The fact is there is hardly no church that doesn’t collect tithes and offerings, even the smallest of them. But then the million dollar question is what do they use these money for and why are they not taxed for it.
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The fact is if we want to start taxing churches we need to look at the reasons why they are not taxed. When churches started centuries ago the goal was simple: teach about God and help the poor. But then as time went on it became clear that the church needed money to continually help the poor and needy which brought about the need for offerings of different things. If we want to be plain, the church is not supposed to be making any money because the money that goes into the church is for one thing: Charity. This is why the church is in the same category as NGOs because they get their money through donations from individuals and corporations that are already taxed by the government. This majorly makes it hard to tax them because there is generally no new source of money coming in than what has been taxed from people’s work.If haters want to be sentimental about this they can argue that if church is for charity then why do pastors live in luxury and members live in poverty.
The answer is simple, the government can not tax these people even though they decide to eat whatever money goes into the church because of the source of the money. The government can only tax working class citizens and businesses, not those living off the income of others. For this reason alone churches can not be taxed. But if we decide to add sentiment to it, there should be a body that takes statistics of how churches are run and make sure they overseers are held accountable for church finances because the purpose of church or any religious activity is for spiritual enlightenment and not making money. In the process of spiritual enlightenment the church can decide to help its members become better people in the society so they can be in a better position to give back to the church just as they have received. At the end of the day, I think the church should be governed properly instead of being taxed. A lot of people might not agree with this, but I believe any institution that is left as a monopoly will end up taking advantage of others and a lot of churches have proven that since a lot of them do not report to any governing body.
THIS IS MY RESPONSE TO HIVE LEARNER'S
PROMPT FOR WEEK 241 EPISODE 2
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