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Federal tax treatment matters to churches, the term the IRS uses for all types of religious congregations, including synagogues, mosques, and temples. The federal tax provisions most significant for churches and certain entities closely related to them, however, are not those that the public and commentators often assume. Exemption from income tax and the ability of donors to deduct contributions, the benefits that receive the most public attention, in fact provide surprisingly little benefit either to churches in the aggregate or to most individual churches. Their status as organizations taxexempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, moreover, imposes a variety of burdens on them. The burdens include limitations on lobbying and the prohibition on any intervention in campaigns for public office. At the same time, churches enjoy special tax benefits not afforded to other section 501(c)(3) organizations, not even other kinds of tax-exempt religious organizations. These special benefits make church status appealing. Such benefits include exemption from filing with the IRS Form 990, an annual information return that, with the exception of the names and addresses of major donors, is also publicly available. In addition, the IRS cannot begin any audit of a church unless it complies with several procedures. Further, unlike other section 501(c)(3) organizations, churches are not required to file an application for recognition of exemption, although many choose to do so. These advantages limit oversight of churches by the IRS, the media, and the public. They create an incentive for religious organizations that share some traits commonly found in churches to seek status as a church. Two recent IRS grants of church or association of churches status have attracted sharp criticism from the media and members of Congress. At the same time, a number of developments, such as loss of membership, expansion of virtual worship, and recent Supreme Court Free Exercise jurisprudence, have created new challenges for churches and their tax treatment. In response to all these developments, this article recommends changes to the longstanding IRS approaches for defining "church" and certain church-affiliated entities. These changes would substitute a definition for church developed by courts and limit the definition for conventions or associations of churches to those of a single denomination. The definitional changes will clarify the distinction between non-church religious organizations and churches. Updating the understanding of "church" to reflect the twenty-first century realities of virtual participation and the increasing diversity of faith communities will also improve IRS oversight. This article also recommends that the GAO undertake a renewed study of campaign intervention by section 501(c)(3) organizations generally. This study will clarify whether all section 501(c)(3) organizations, including churches, are in fact violating this prohibition in ways that go beyond sporadic, minor, and usually inadvertent footfalls. In the authors' view the recommended changes would benefit churches and the public because they take into account both current realities and current concerns. In so doing, they would not only give churches welcome guidance but also increase public trust that churches are not abusing the special privileges they enjoy under federal tax law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociological literature has produced a remarkably consistent picture of the quantitative patterns of religious disaffiliations in Western countries. This article argues, and demonstrates, that strong changes in a social context may lead individuals to disaffiliate rapidly, leading to very different aggregate effects from those in the "western model." We use the unique situation of the separation of Germany from 1949 to 1989 and its subsequent reunification as a "natural experiment" to show just how much the relationships routinely found can be disrupted under changed conditions. The state socialist "treatment" affected religious disaffiliations in East Germany profoundly as it (a) made disaffiliations 10 times more probable in the East than in the West in the 1950s and 1960s, (b) shielded East German church members from factors that led to mass disaffiliations in the West in the late 1960s and early 1970s, (c) reversed the education‐disaffiliation link in the East, thus making disaffiliation more likely among the less educated, and (d) led to an especially strong increase in disaffiliations in the East right after the reunification [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the relationship between religious and charitable giving. We find crowding in between the German church tax and charitable giving for church members, but not for church leavers. In contrast to church members, donations of church leavers and nonmembers are also highly responsive to the tax deductibility. Additionally, nondonors exhibit a significantly increased probability of leaving their church compared to donors. Finally, leaving the church increases donations on the extensive margin but decreases them along the intensive margin. Our results suggest that a more secular society may lead to diminished donations through a declining crowding-in effect of religious giving on other charitable donations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Öffentliche und Gemeinwirtschaftliche Unternehmen (ZÖgU) / Journal for Public & Nonprofit Services is the property of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Central European Journal for Contemporary Religion is the property of Charles University Prague, Karolinum Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Disaffiliation indicates a major future challenge to the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches in Germany, particularly regarding the church tax. This article addresses that issue by first describing the particular German context of disaffiliation. It then summarises previous research, which indicates that the church tax is the trigger to leave the church. An analysis of recent data reveals that the portion of church members is lowest in those income classes that have to pay an above average amount of church tax. Moreover, the likelihood to resign from church membership is highest when the individual begins his or her first paid job. Both findings ascribe church tax a more powerful role in the process of disaffiliation than previous research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the enactment of the modern federal income tax, churches have been exempt from taxation. But that exemption is neither necessary nor inevitable. In fact, at the end of the 1860s, the Bureau of Internal Revenue decided that tithing received by the Mormon church was taxable under the Civil War income tax. At the time, Mormons distrusted the federal government and the federal government, in turn, distrusted the Mormons. The question of taxation was a small part of a larger legal and existential battle between the Mormons and the government. This Article situates the question of the taxability of tithing in the broader legal and relational conflict. More important, it tells the story of how the income tax threatened to fundamentally change the Mormon church and how Mormon leaders reacted to that threat, both with increasingly sophisticated legal arguments and, in the event their legal argumentation failed, with plans to take the tax law into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study aims to understand the reasons why Roman Catholics leave the church based on the example of Austria, a country with high rates of disaffiliation since the 1980s. Although previous research focused mainly on the church tax, this study provides a more comprehensive analysis based on a mixed‐methods approach that reveals the central relevance of the family in the process. We began by conducting and analyzing 19 qualitative interviews with former Catholics. Next we used the Generations and Gender Survey (two‐wave representative panel data) to study the characteristics of Catholics who disaffiliated in the intersurvey period (2008–2012). Two types could be distinguished in the qualitative and the quantitative sample: attached and distant leavers. Both rarely attended religious services and were critical of the church, but attached leavers held a private form of religiosity and engaged in religious practices whereas distant leavers self‐identified as agnostics or atheists. The church tax was the main reason for disaffiliation among attached leavers while distant leavers disaffiliated on ideological grounds. One identical factor, however, was of major importance for explaining church‐leaving behavior among both types: family‐related matters and experiences. We conclude that family members and family transitions play a major role in the process of religious disaffiliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of the article is the analysis of the basic systems for the financing of the religious communities with specific reference to the system of the church taxation. Author’s approach is historical, desciptivr, comparative and analytical. There is a special treatment of the different aspects of the church taxation system in Germany and Republic of Croatia.

The paper deals with a little explored topic. On the basis of presented data it states that the church tax aimed at defending Hungary was paid by a large number of church dignitaries. Besides secular provostries the tax also had to be paid by arch-deacons, Benedictine abbeys and Premonstratensian provostries. Based on the legal article, each church dignitary was obliged to pay half of all of his income. The question is whether it is possible to determine the group of those who really paid this tax. Using the obtained data, there is a good precondition for finding an answer to this question. In the following lines we will look for answers to the following questions: Who and how much would pay? Were some dignitaries exempt from the tax or were they accorded at least some tax concessions? In which years was the tax collected? Who would collect the tax and to what end would they invest the money? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the church rates in the parishes in the second Republic of Poland.

Most tax-exempt organizations are required to file the IRS Form 990, an information return that is open to the public. The Form 990 is used by watchdogs and donors to learn detailed financial information about charities. However, churches are exempt from filing the Form 990 and need not disclose any financial information to the IRS, the public, or their donors. In December 2012, the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability recommended to Senator Charles Grassley that Congress should preserve the exemption, despite recent financial scandals at churches. Examining the legislative history, this Article argues that the primary function of the information return has become its utility to donors, and policymakers have recognized the role that public access can play in keeping nonprofits honest and efficient. Unfortunately, because churches do not have to be transparent or accountable, few of them are. Using research and insights from sociology, this Article contends that because of their opacity and the unique nature of religious authority, churches are more likely to foster and shelter malfeasance. Churchgoers are unlikely to challenge leaders because doing so can endanger their position in the religious community, making it imperative that transparency be mandated by outside authorities. Ironically, increased transparency may actually be good for churches because, as studies suggest, it is likely to increase donations and because, by minimizing opportunities for financial improprieties, it may preserve the religious experience of churchgoers. In addition, transparency is consistent with the teaching of many Christian leaders and with the expressed preferences of a large portion of churchgoers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we examine the effect of church tax on the church membership decision using Finnish data. We present both descriptive statistics from an opting-out website and econometric evidence exploiting the panel structure of a large individual-level data set. Our descriptive analysis shows that opting out is concentrated towards the last days of the year, i.e., the last chance to avoid paying church tax for the entire coming year. Our econometric evidence suggests that the average effect of tax incentives for the whole population is both statistically and economically significant. A 1 standard deviation increase in church tax leads to between 0.5 and 1 percentage point decline in the likelihood of church membership. In addition, we find that church membership dropped substantially when a law change made opting out significantly easier. This finding suggests that transaction costs play an important role in the membership decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financing churches and other religious organizations is a socially significant issue, but it is especially important to religious entities and their members. That is why it is worth to mention a book Finansowanie Kościołów i innych związków wyznaniowych [Financing Churches and Other Religious Organizations], published in 2013 and edited by Paweł Sobczyk and Krzysztof Warchałowski, which is a monograph consisting of 28 articles by various authors. This substantial volume of 478 pages begins with an introduction and is divided into seven parts. At the end there is also an appendix and a summary in English. Part One of the book is devoted to general matters; Part Two concerns fi nancing religious organizations from the historical perspective; Part Three deals with fi nancing cultural and scientific activities of religious entities; Part Four presents selected aspects of fi nancing the activities of religious entities; Part Five discusses tax and insurance questions; Part Six addresses the subject of regulating the fi nancial situation of churches and other religious organizations and Part Seven presents the principles of fi nancing religious entities in selected countries. The appendix addresses the question of readiness on the part of both the State and religious entities to face a possible lack of social response to a plausible necessity of paying a church tax. The book is an important scholarly contribution to the question of fi nancing religious entities in Poland, especially in the face of intended changes in the fi nancial basis of religious entities in the Republic of Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents Chapter 6 of the book "Ideas of the Liberal Party: Perceptions, Agendas and Liberal Politics in the House of Commons, 1832-1852," by Joseph Coohill. It focuses on political support for an Anglican church establishment in England and parish property taxation. Other topics include public attitudes towards church rates, the role of symbolism in political debates, and Liberal Party support for church rate abolition.

The article presents information on the history of church tax exemption that has been partly restricted by the U.S. Congress in 1934 and 1954. It discusses the uneven and sporadic nature of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) enforcement of the Johnson Amendment that prohibits the tax-exempt organizations from endorsing political candidates. It suggests that the Johnson Amendment is an unconstitutional violation of the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses.

This article discusses Catholic Church legislation during the year 2010, specifically that which relates to ecclesiastical law in Spain. It examines the state of the Church's administrative institutions in the country, including its economic and financial conditions. The author analyzes the use of ecclesiastical titles and studies several laws promulgated throughout 2010 in Spain, including the Ley 39/2010, which deals with the Church budget, and the Orden EHA/799/2010, which refers to the Church's income tax.

This article discusses the initiatives, actions, and decrees related to ecclesiastical law in Spain by the Catholic Church for the year 2010. It examines the role of the Church in religious and sex education. The author analyzes the Supreme Court's recognition of the conflict over the display of religious symbols and comments on the economic aspects of the Catholic Church in Spain, including church property taxes. He also studies the action taken by the Church on religious freedoms and human rights during the year.

The author discusses the Church tax system of Germany and other European countries, and how it can be applied in the Philippines. Church tax is compulsory for membership in particular religious denominations such as Catholic, Protestant, and other Churches in Germany and Europe. Church taxes are reportedly collected either by the government, which gets a share and remits it to the Church, or the Church through the dioceses, which distribute them through charitable projects. The author feels a similar system adapted to Philippine setting is applicable.

The article discusses the practice of some European nations of paying church taxes. In some European nations such as Germany, Austria and Italy, collection of Church taxes is allowed on members of some religious groups. The origins of the practice date back from pre-Christian Germanic times wherein the head of the tribe is responsible for the welfare of priests and religious cults. At some point in the 19th century, the churches evolved into separate financial institutions thus, the introduction of church taxes.

The article discusses the end of religious taxation in Vermont in 1807. Connections between state-sponsored religion and public morality are discussed. Particular focus is given to the influence of the Congregational church in New England during the early 19th century. The social and religious diversity in Vermont during the late 18th and early 19th centuries is discussed. Particular focus is given to the effects of disestablishment.

This article discusses the ecclesiastical tax in the Cuyo region, which was part of Chile during the colonial period from the 16th to late 18th centuries, and later organized into Argentina. It examines the origins of the tariff in the Santiago de Chile bishopric in the latter half of the 16th century. The author studies historical records related to the church tax system and the taxes collected, including those under several archbishops of Chile throughout the time period studied. He also analyzes the attempts made to reform the ecclesiastical tax during the Synod of 1700.

The postwar division of Germany and establishment of a Communist regime in the eastern part, formally established as the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1949, meant that those living in the East were subjected to a very different ideology from their western counterparts. Church tax has been a part of German law in one form or another since the nineteenth century, and centuries earlier there were similar methods of financing the church when tithing of goods and later money was practised. An important aspect of state-church relationships in Germany is the religious education of children in school.

Focuses on the works of church tax collector Boemundo di Vezza in Scotland. Overview on the selection of di Vezza as tax collector; Exemptions under the 1274 tax; Analysis of di Vezza's assessment of Scotland's benefices; Methods used by di Vezza in collecting taxes.