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City (Memphis TN) could ask non-profits (churches)to make tax payments
The Memphis Commercial Appeal ^ | 7/2/12 | Amos Maki

Posted on 07/02/2012 7:53:39 PM PDT by Sybeck1

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Desoto county will gladly welcome you Bellevue Baptist!
1 posted on 07/02/2012 7:53:58 PM PDT by Sybeck1
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To: Sybeck1
Smells like reparations, Memphis style.
2 posted on 07/02/2012 7:58:06 PM PDT by hinckley buzzard
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To: Sybeck1; wardaddy

Janis Fullilove is a VERY sloppy drunk, and quite possibly psychotic.

In the vernacular of the locals...

“She CRAYYYYzih.”


3 posted on 07/02/2012 8:01:03 PM PDT by Yudan (Living comes much easier once we admit we're dying.)
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To: Sybeck1

Will the 16,000 newly minted IRS agents be “asking” me to buy Government approved health insurance?


4 posted on 07/02/2012 8:01:07 PM PDT by Gay State Conservative (Bill Ayers Was *Not* "Just Some Guy In The Neighborhood")
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To: Sybeck1

Why would a church want to give the city monies they will squander when they are so much more effective at actually giving help and support where it is needed? The left is not happy unless they are finding more ways to loot the populace.


5 posted on 07/02/2012 8:02:30 PM PDT by formosa (Formosa)
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To: Sybeck1

Why would a church want to give the city monies they will squander when they are so much more effective at actually giving help and support where it is needed? The left is not happy unless they are finding more ways to loot the populace.


6 posted on 07/02/2012 8:03:05 PM PDT by formosa (Formosa)
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Comment #7 Removed by Moderator

To: Sybeck1
As citizens move more and more toward looking to government for their wants and needs, and devaluing the institutions which traditionally provide the kinds of services that churches, hospitals, and other non-profits are known for, then the natural thing is for government to gain ground and to intrude into what once was recognized as valuable.

Why should it be up to government to decide how much property such organizations or institutions should own?

There was a time when doing good voluntarily, out of a benevolent spirit, was considered valuable and not to be penalized by the coercive arm of government.

8 posted on 07/02/2012 8:09:29 PM PDT by loveliberty2
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To: Sybeck1

Councilman Jim Strickland, chairman of the council’s budget committee, sees no downside in asking tax-exempt entities to make PILOT payments.

“I don’t see anything wrong with asking,” he said. “The worst thing that can happen with this is them saying no, so I think it’s definitely worth asking.”


Kinda reminds me of a certain presidential candidate suggesting the redirecting of wedding presents his way.

Like it doesn’t hurt to ask...

...Really?


9 posted on 07/02/2012 8:18:21 PM PDT by ne1410s ("If the past sits in judgment on the present, the future will be lost." Winston Churchill)
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To: Sybeck1

I guess churches could look at it as not being a tax, but simply a penalty for being Christian.


10 posted on 07/02/2012 8:20:45 PM PDT by freeangel ( (free speech is only good until someone else doesn't like it)
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To: Sybeck1

I was born and raised in Memphis, back when it was the nation’s cleanest and quietest city, with good public education, the nation’s finest utility district (L,G,&W) all under one roof, and the nations finest fire department.
It is now 60 percent Afro, and they have taken over everything, destroying it as they go.

I have only one daughter left there, hanging on.
I moved to the country in 1972, and OUT OF the country (USA) in 2004.


11 posted on 07/02/2012 8:23:28 PM PDT by AlexW
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To: Sybeck1

#4 Methodist Healthcare
#5 Baptist Memorial Healthcare Corp
#19 St. Judes
#23 Catholic Diocese of Memphis
#31 Regional Medical Center
#32 St. Francis Hospital
#33 Veterans Affairs Hospital


A couple of the hospitals might not be NFP. The IRS is #14; the rest of the Feds make up number 3. If these two are added together, they become number 2.


12 posted on 07/02/2012 8:29:52 PM PDT by Ingtar ("As the light begins to fade in the city on the hill")
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To: Sybeck1
I think Memphis is being extremely short sighted trying to tax some of the non-profits. Especially hospitals.
That said, my question really is why are churches tax exempt? Damn near all of them preach politics. Many, if not most are cash cows for somebody or some “non-profit” corporation. Back in the 60s I worked for a church publishing plant. Non-profit? What a scam. Another plant in another state was closed because it was not "efficient" enough. Efficient being a synonym for profitable. I say tax the churches just a other businesses are taxed.
13 posted on 07/02/2012 8:33:53 PM PDT by Tupelo (Old Cowboys never die. They just smell like it.)
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To: Tzar
Does federal law stop local governments from taxing nonprofits?

An interesting question. I hope somebody has an answer.

14 posted on 07/02/2012 8:43:20 PM PDT by Graybeard58
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To: Sybeck1

The way the Supreme Court values “being on the right side of history” and “the legitimacy of the Court” over the actual Constitution, anything is possible. Why not—these people figure—try to abrogate the First Amendment?


15 posted on 07/02/2012 8:53:36 PM PDT by denydenydeny (Admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt one has for others.-Tocqueville)
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To: Tupelo

As John Marshall once wrote, the power to tax is the power to destroy. IAC, you make all these broadbrush accusations. Most of what churches do has nothing at all to do with making a buck. You just don’t like churches.


16 posted on 07/02/2012 8:54:22 PM PDT by RobbyS (Christus rex.)
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To: Sybeck1
Memphis may join the growing list of cash-strapped cities that ask nonprofit and tax-exempt organizations to make payments in lieu of tax.

As municipal budgets have felt the crunch of the economic slowdown, cities across the nation are increasingly asking their major tax-exempt businesses — hospitals, universities and cultural organizations — to make payments in lieu of taxes.

"ask"?
"asking"?
You can always tell when the scumbag Democrat politicians and their newsrooms are at work.

Big Government doesn't "ask" for money - - the scumbag politicians confiscate it at the point of a gun. The scum need to make sure their juicy perks and pensions remain fully funded, and they still have enough money left over to buy the votes of their "base" of losers, bums, deadbeats, and parasites. And the scumbag Democrats can always count on their newsroom mice like this author Amos Maki to use gentle language on their behalf.

Yeah, they're going to "ask" for money, lol.

17 posted on 07/02/2012 9:09:23 PM PDT by Lancey Howard
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To: Sybeck1
"We'll have to determine if we need a new system," Fullilove said.

In the western tradition going back to medieval times at least, Church and state were in charge of separate spheres, the state would govern, and the Church took care of the charitable works and welfare. Hospitals? Those were the Churches. Welfare? The Church would allow the poor to farm on the Church's land for below market rates if they could not afford land. The arts and sciences? The Church subsidized them and hired artists and tradesman of all kinds creating art, building churches, etc. Compared to the Church, the King's contributions to these fields was trivial.

So why did the government take over? It goes back to the French Revolution, and even earlier, in which a new rabidly secular government would appease citizens by taking over Church property and selling it off in order to buy the loyalty of the citizens. It was competing with the Church for the hearts of the citizens, jealously encroaching on the sphere it had no real business being in.

The United States held out longer than Europe, because we are still constitutionally more medieval than "enlightened" Europe. Not only do we still have the Church, we have a vast network of thousands upon thousands of charities for any cause imaginable, using our citizen's rights of free association to create the means to solve any problem we set our minds to, without waiting for the government to act first or tell us what to do.

And this tradition is not obsolete, it aught to be the wave of the future. While "progressives" wish to create a rigid health care bureaucracy that rivals something from the Stalinism of the 1930s, the future is about mobility, free associations, Facebook, finding and linking to others for a common purpose.

Instead of taxing churches to support your obsolete model, you should be examining things in your own sphere which you can give back to the private sector, whether private enterprise or the vast web of charities that already exists in your town.

That's the system you need to rebuild.

18 posted on 07/02/2012 9:11:23 PM PDT by Vince Ferrer
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To: RobbyS

No. I do not dislike churchs. I just think they should pay their way like every other business.


19 posted on 07/02/2012 9:12:06 PM PDT by Tupelo (Old Cowboys never die. They just smell like it.)
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To: Tupelo

They are called non-profits for a reason.

PS Those groups may be contrasted with government agencies attempting to circumvent the Constitution and move into the realm of charity. Best reason not to allow such unconstitutional agency bad behavior is that AgencyPersons and their agencies waste well over 70% of every dollar they get, via government, from us!

Usually, less than one taxpayer dollar in four gets to the needy if an agency get its paws on it first.


20 posted on 07/02/2012 9:30:04 PM PDT by GladesGuru (In a society predicated upon freedom, it is necessary to examine principles."...the public interest)
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