Should megachurches mixing with business interests still be tax exempt?

[babylonsister]

Megachurches Add Local Economy to Their Mission


By DIANA B. HENRIQUES and ANDREW W. LEHREN
Published: November 23, 2007


In Anchorage early in October, the doors opened onto a soaring white canvas dome with room for a soccer field and a 400-meter track. Its prime-time hours are already rented well into 2011.

Nearby is a cold-storage facility leased to Sysco, a giant food-distribution corporation, and beside it is a warehouse serving a local contractor and another food service company.

The entrepreneur behind these businesses is the ChangePoint ministry, a 4,000-member nondenominational Christian congregation that helped develop and finance the sports dome. It has a partnership with Sysco’s landlord and owns the warehouse.

The church’s leaders say they hope to draw people to faith by publicly demonstrating their commitment to meeting their community’s economic needs.

“We want to turn people on to Jesus Christ through this process,” said Karl Clauson, who has led the church for more than eight years.

Among the nation’s so-called megachurches — those usually Protestant congregations with average weekly attendance of 2,000 or more — ChangePoint’s appetite for expansion into many kinds of businesses is hardly unique. An analysis by The New York Times of the online public records of just over 1,300 of these giant churches shows that their business interests are as varied as basketball schools, aviation subsidiaries, investment partnerships and a limousine service.

At least 10 own and operate shopping centers, and some financially formidable congregations are adding residential developments to their holdings. In one such elaborate project, LifeBridge Christian Church, near Longmont, Colo., plans a 313-acre development of upscale homes, retail and office space, a sports arena, housing for the elderly and church buildings.

Indeed, some huge churches, already politically influential, are becoming catalysts for local economic development, challenging a conventional view that churches drain a town financially by generating lower-paid jobs, taking land off the property-tax rolls and increasing traffic.

But the entrepreneurial activities of churches pose questions for their communities that do not arise with secular development.

These enterprises, whose sponsoring churches benefit from a variety of tax breaks and regulatory exemptions given to religious organizations in this country, sometimes provoke complaints from for-profit businesses with which they compete — as ChangePoint’s new sports center has in Anchorage.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/23/business/23megachurch.html?ref=todayspaper

[SoCalDem]

1. All money above what it takes to pay a "fair" salary and to keep the actual church running

should be taxable..

Churches should not be in the real estate business, or any other "business" except "dong the lord's work"..

and they definitely should NOT be in the POLITICS business..

If their "flock" does not know how their church teachings reflect on the political atmosphere, without having Preachers TELL them how to vote, they must not have a good understanding of their own faith or their own minds..

[Perry Logan]

2. Since the churches now want to feed at the public trough, I think they should all pay taxes.

[Vinca]

3. Absolutely. When preachers require $23,000 toilets, it's time to send

the IRS around. It's nothing more than a get-rich-quick scheme.

[TechBear_Seattle]

4. No

Section 501(c)(3) of the US Tax Code applies to corporations and any community chest, fund, or foundation which are organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, or to foster national or international amateur sports competition, or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals. (Churches are not automatically exempt; legally, they are no different than pee-wee football, Underwriters Laboratories or the local chapter of the Humaine Society.)

Churches, like any corporate entity with a 501(c)(3) exemption, should lose that status if they no longer operate exclusively within the bounds of this law.

What more needs to be said?

[timtom]

5. Didn't Jesus and company own a

....no, come to think of it, they didn't own a thing (except the clothes on their backs).

They even advised against getting involved in wealth in any way.

Sports center, indeed!!!

These ass monkeys make me want to scream.

[Reno.Muse]

6. Make em pay taxes! These are nothing more than glorified clubs

for holier than thou elitists.

[Solar_Power]

7. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, etc. are also masters of tax-free living

what a sham

[porphyrian]

8. No churches should be tax exempt.

If they do charitable work, they can follow the same procedure for tax exemption as everybody else in creating a charity. Churches themselves are not charities, however, and should not be automatically tax exempt.

[Selatius]

9. Want to shield money from taxation? Start your own religion. Or so said Ron Hubbard.

That's exactly what he did. Now any and all financial transactions that occur within the confines of Scientology are tax exempt because it's a religion.

[Blue_In_AK]

10. Wow, I thought this was just a local story

when I read it in the paper this morning.