Posted on 10/10/2012 10:17:39 AM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
The Italian Catholic Church will be stripped of an historic tax exemption from 2013 after the government upheld a divisive decree under close scrutiny from EU watchdogs.
In 2010 the EU opened an investigation into whether tax breaks enjoyed by some Church properties in Italy could be classed as illegal state aid.
The Church currently pays tax on several properties it owns that are commercial enterprises but is exempt if at least some of the activities on the property are "non-commercial" - for example a chapel in a hotel.
"The regulatory framework will be definite by January 1, 2013 - the start of the fiscal year - and will fully respect the (European) Community law," Prime Minister Mario Monti's government said in a statement late Tuesday.
In February, the government had amended Italy's property tax law to end the Church's privileges amid rising calls for the Vatican to share in debt crisis sacrifices and in the face of intense scrutiny from the European Commission.
On Monday the Council of State, Italy's highest ranking court for administrative litigation, rejected the decree. But the government insisted everyone would pay property tax, Church included.
In 2010 the EU opened an investigation into whether tax breaks enjoyed by some Church properties in Italy could be classed as illegal state aid.
The extra revenue from these exempt properties - including hotels, restaurants and sports centres - could be €25.5m a year in Rome alone, La Repubblica daily reported, citing official figures.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Soon to be brought to the U.S. by liberals.....
I never understood why a house of worship could accrue wealth and be held to a different standard.
/johnny
Look at St. Patrick's Cathedral in NYC.
It was finished in 1878 and was basically in the middle of a field.
Now it is located in the heart of NYC's Fifth Avenue high-end shopping district.
The land under the Cathedral has gone from being worth a few thousand dollars to over several hundred million dollars.
But you can't spend a cathedral. You actually have to spend an exorbitant amount of money on it every year just to keep it up to city building codes.
On paper, if the cathedral was a real estate investment, the Church made a killing.
But it's not an investment. It's a cathedral.
I see no reason for religious institutions to be exempt from taxes. They receive police and fire protection without having to pay? That doesn’t seem fair in light of the fact that there is no Biblical precedent for this; actually quite the opposite! I also know that a lot of people take advantage of this tax loophole; i.e., mail order divinity degrees, etc.
I wonder if the current policies are based on the 1929 treaty between Italy and the Vatican. Not that the EU bureaucrats would feel themselves bound by a treaty.
News reports say the Vatican owns many billions of dollars of property in Italy so even a small tax would amount to hundreds of millions of dollars and that’s a plum worth the picking.
Do you also want to tax universities, colleges, private schools, public schools, homeless shelters, social work offices, and other tax-exempts? Or is your target only religious institutions?
They tend to the poor and needy ad the well to do equally and without pay. They also tend to fallen police and firefighters. Father Mychal Judge died at the WTC attach giving last rights to a fallen firefighter. He didn't get paid shit. And now he's dead. And some fucktard is bitching about him not paying taxes on his tiny cell in the Friary. FU.
Many fire departments around here are volunteer.
And what about all that other crap that government taxes us to pay for? It's not all for fire and police, that's a tiny bit.
Howzabout we get government OUT of it. ALL of it.
/johnny
One could make the same argument for any building. Either everyone pays taxes or no one. Why should a house of worship be exempt?
I believe that churches should not be tax exempt. There is unfortunately, a great separation between church and state, particularly today. There was and still remains an uneasy state between the two ideals. There almost seems to be a deal struck between church and government that places a “gag” on the voice of the church. However, the church accepted the deal, and prostituted itself in exchange for monetary gain in the form of tax relief. Over and over again the bible and history chronicles the accounts of those who stood against government policies, atrocities, and by that, in many cases, have changed the course of history. The church, as designed and ordained by God, needs to train the people of the world in the ways of God. First we as christians, we need to love God with every bit of our being. Second, we need to love one another unconditionally (without any conditions). Third, we need to tell all people about Jesus Christ, and demonstrate the other two points in the way we live. Everything else will fall into place … including government.
These things are clear in the tax exempt issue:
1. Most nations do not give tax exemptions unless the organization registers with the government as a not-for-profit organization.
2. When you register with the government for special treatment regarding taxes, you forfeit your constitutional rights and become an instrumentality of the government. I said that in legal language on purpose, for IT IS A FACT. This is true whether it is the Gay Liberation Task Force of the First Baptist Church.
3. If you go to Caesar and get a tax break for your members’ donations, you MUST obey Caesar’s rules. This includes any rules about what you preach and teach. It is Caesar’s game you are playing, and you gave him the right to virtually run your church, sack your board of directors, and dissolve your organization and give it to the entity in your dissolution clause, WHICH YOU MUST HAVE TO BE A NON-PROFIT. This HAS been done several times, and it holds up in court.
4. If you give tax exempt receipts, you have no idea if your members give to the church out of Christian obedience or just to get a tax break. Also, Caesar is, de facto, helping you take the offering each Sunday.
5. A local church, by ancient law definition, is a lawful entity as it stands. There is NO reason to register a local church with the government. Thus, in the USA anyway, you do NOT have to render to Caesar what is God’s.
6. If you are not a registered church with the IRS, you can preach anything you wish to preach from your pulpit since you are a private entity. And, you can discriminate as to who enters your local church and who participates, which is NOT the case if you are registered as a non-profit corporation.
Given the provisions of the First Amendment and tghe self-evident maxim that the power to tax is the power to destroy, I would concede to NO government a “right” to tax churches. There was no “deal” struck. When Lyndon Johnson was Senate Majority Leader he grafted onto IRS law the anti-politics from the pulpit provisions of the IRS laws. We got along without such provisions until then and we can well do without them now.
Also, I did not get your answer to #9.
Indeed. Traditionally, it has been recognized that the state has no jurisdiction in the ordinary affairs of the Church, and thus, does not have the authority to tax the Church.
That this basic, fundamental doctrine of Christendom, and of Western Civilization, is nearly lost tells us emphatically how bad off we are culturally. These were once truths recognized by all civilized men of the West. Now, we are surrounded by barbarians.
sitetest
Sorry. I personally believe NO ONE should have to pay any type of federal tax. Simplistically, this government should tax imported goods only; tariffs, excise and customs, etc.
The taxes we pay should ONLY come at the state and local level and at that level ALL entities should chip in including your universities and churches. No one should receive free services that we citizens are required to pay for.
Government is at the will and authorized by the Creator and must be supported. That whole render unto Caesar bit! The people of God must NEVER submit to the will of the government if it is against the Lord’s will. Remember, Christ’s church is not buildings and property and business - it is people!!!!!
Siris Lee’s crude comments about a priest friend of his who died at the WTC, while tragic, has nothing to do with paying taxes. A lot of people who do pay taxes died too so I don’t get his point.
If you take money from the government then it owns you!
Christ did not establish a brick and mortar church! His church is PEOPLE and people only. The fact that the Catholic church (and many others) built a huge empire of buildings, land and fabulous artwork has nothing to do with Christ and must therefore submit to the will of the government regarding financial matters.
God ordains government and commands us to support it. When government will tries to usurp God’s will, then the church (people) must resist. God’s will has NOTHING to do with money!!!!!
Read Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum (1893) for a succinct statement justifying revolution against impertinent or evil or even merely grossly negligent governments. Many governments have persecuted the Church but the Church has turned shovels of dirt on the graves of each. You do not imagine that the US government is likely to last longer than the Roman Empire, do you? Gorbachev now resides in San Francisco. Ask him why the Church persists and the USSR does not.
The Good Book has Christ responding to a question by a wise guy as to whose coin is one bearing Caesar's likeness. This results in an answer: Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's. No definition of either and no suggestion of rendering unto Caesar what is God's (the property of His Church).
Unless your occupational name is Benedict XVI, what makes you think that any Catholic should heed your baseless speculations, especially to the detriment of God's Church??? My loyalty is and will remain to my Church and not to some transitory government of the usual suspects. If government occasionally gets something right like enacting an ordinance prohibiting parking near a theater exit lest the vehicle parked become an obstacle to escape in case opf fire or explosion, that is one thing. A government ordering that abortion of 50+ million be tolerated because Black and White and the Seven Shades of Gray on SCOTUS in 1973 (excepting Rehnquist and Whizzer White) wanted to sentence the innocent to be dismembered, sliced, diced and hamburgerized in utero, commands no obedience whatsoever. Verrry few of our Founding Fathers were Catholic. In fact, Charles Carroll of Carrollton was the one and only Catholic signatory of the Declaration of Independence.
Either Carroll (a Jesuit prep school alumnus) was extraordinarily successful in forcing Catholic values on such founders as Adams and Jefferson and many other quite textured personalities OR they agreed with him and Rome on the matter of revolution. Personally, I am going with the second explanation especially since Carroll was elected to the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, played no role in the deliberations and merely signed the work of the rest. OTOH, once Adams and Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration, Carroll was the only surviving signatory and he lived more than another six years thereafter as the sole survivor.
God's will is God's will and no one died and left you as an authority on the subject. This transitory insanity in Italy will pass away. The Church marks time in centuries not in the short run-up to the next election among secular fools.
What you personally prefer as tax policy may become relevant if you are ever crowned as an absolute monarch. If that should happen, be sure and let us know. Until then, it matters not that you prefer only state and local taxes or only tariffs, excises and customs, or whatever or that you resent the existence of tax-exempt churches, universities and, presumably, other tax-exempts all because YOU have to pay for their fire and police protection (and protection from enemies foreign and domestic and a lot of other things). If you happen to be a libertarian, one may feel a sense of sympathy for your eccentricities without sharing them.
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