Church Tax Exemption: An Explainer

March 3, 2023 by 20 Comments

It seems like every time there’s a church scandal—and especially one that concerns money—people start arguing that the scandal-ridden church (or even churches in general) should lose their tax exemptions. (If you want to see an example, search “mormon tax exemption” on Twitter.)

So how does tax exemption relate to churches, and especially churches that make a lot of money? I thought it might be worth a quick Explainer.

Why Are Churches Exempt, Anyway?

Fair questions. One reason is history—religious exemptions from taxation go back at least to the Bible. When Joseph imposed a 20% tax on Egyptian land, he exempted the priests from the tax.

Jump forward to the United States: while it hasn’t been a straight line, the exemption of at least some religious property from the property tax goes all the way back to Colonial days. And churches have been exempt from income taxation since the introduction of the modern federal income tax.

[Read more…]
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What We Owe to Each Other: Humanitarian Aid Edition

February 7, 2023 by 11 Comments

By now, I’m sure you’ve read about the devastation in Türkiye[fn1] and Syria. As of this writing, there are at least 7,700 dead in those two countries, a number widely expected to rise. In Türkiye alone, more than 6,000 buildings have collapsed, leaving an estimated 150,000 without homes. At least two UNESCO World Heritage sites, one in each country, have sustained significant damage.

In response to this utter devastation, the world has stepped up. The UN has dispatched aid teams. The EU, several European countries, the US, South Korea, Israel, Russia, Algeria, UAE, and Iraq (among others) have all sent or pledged aid.

This international governmental response is critical. But governments aren’t acting alone here: many nonprofit and charitable organizations are also providing money, tents, warmth, medicine, and other critically-needed aid. (I wrote a little about the nonprofit response, as well as some questions around nonprofit aid, here.)

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The Salt Lake Tribune is Officially a Public Charity!

November 4, 2019 by

Photo by Cool Hand Luke [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

This morning, the Salt Lake Tribune announced that the IRS had granted it tax-exempt status as a 501(c)(3) public charity.[fn1] And, while it’s not the first tax-exempt news organization, it says that it’s the first legacy newsroom that’s transformed from for-profit to nonprofit.[fn2]

This doesn’t come entirely as a surprise: six months ago, it announced its intention to become a nonprofit/tax-exempt organization, and I wrote an Explainer about it. So now that it’s real, what does that mean for the Tribune?

I don’t think we know yet. The paper hasn’t announced what changes it plans to make, if any. I stand by everything I wrote last time I wrote about this, but I’ll add a couple things now that it’s real. [Read more…]

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Explainer: Tax-Exempt Salt Lake Tribune

May 8, 2019 by

Yesterday, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that the Salt Lake Tribune has been in serious discussions about becoming a tax-exempt newspaper.[fn1]

This is kind of a big deal. I mean, it wouldn’t be the first tax-exempt newsroom, of course. NPR, for example, has been delivering news as a tax-exempt organization since 1971. And it’s not even the first newspaper (-like organization): ProPublica, a tax-exempt investigative newsroom, has been tax-exempt for more than a decade, and Voice of San Diego, which does the same type of investigative journalism in the San Diego region, has been exempt since 2005.[fn2] WNYC’s On the Media was talking about the potential of newspapers become tax-exempt around that same time, too.[fn3]

But if this happens, the Trib would become the first legacy newspaper to switch from a for-profit model to a tax-exempt, not-for-profit model. Which raises at least two significant questions: why and how. So let’s do an Explainer! [Read more…]

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