That would work, along with an extra sarcastic tone and raised eyebrows.
I don’t know if it would be good enough for CNN, but it’s good enough for me. I’m stealing this.
Huh. Seems like it would be pretty easy to set something up to avoid paying taxes. Why isn’t that more popular, I wonder? 
I like that they tar all churches with the Phelps brush. I’d rather they get no attention from the press but they are a church, different only in the extremity of their views.
Yeah, seems odd to me. SDMB is generally for self-identification, unless it’s self-identification by someone whose beliefs you find loathsome, I guess.
Right. If a mom-and-pop store insisted on calling themselves a megacorporation, should CNN have to do that, too?
Because while it would exempt donation to the church, it wouldn’t exempt your income from a job. Now, if you have the time to set up and maintain an organized structure, and convince people to give you enough money that you don’t need another job, you might be able to get away with it.
Because one meets the definition and one doesn’t. The M&P store isn’t an extremely large and powerful corporation but the Phelps church apparently meets the definition of a church.
It doesn’t seem that hard.
I didn’t know there were rules. I just thought any crazy person in a robe could get a handful of followers, et voilà. I can cobble together most of this shit fairly easily, but I can see some potential roadblocks.
“2. A recognized creed and form of worship” - Recognized by who? Can I recognize myself?
“5. A distinct religious history” - Define “history.” Is the time between me deciding to start a church and actually starting it history?
Need answers fast! I have a church to start.
MeanOldLady, you don’t have to start a whole religion, just a church. You just don’t want to go with a centralized religion like Catholicism, the hierarchy will be bugging you all the time about the stuff you say. Anything vague and nondenominational that uses the Bible would probably do it.
Don’t they identify as “Westboro Baptist Church”? I would think the rest of the Baptists would get together and sue Westboro for slander or ex-communicate them or something.
The rest of the Baptists don’t really disagree with the purported beliefs of Phelps in terms of how homosexuals are subhumans and deserving of persecution/violence. The only reason this powerless fringe group has attracted condemnation, whereas the other 100 million American religionists who hate homosexuals are to be treated with “civility” as legitimate participants in a debate, is because Phelps says negative things about American soldiers.
For that reason you’d think they’d want to disassociate themselves with the Phelps group.
501(c)(3 status, here I come!
[QUOTE=http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1828.pdf]
To qualify for tax-exempt status, such an organization must meet the following requirements (covered in greater detail throughout this publication):
■ the organization must be organized and operated exclusively for religious, educational, scientific, or other charitable purposes,
■ net earnings may not inure to the benefit of any private individual or shareholder,
■ no substantial part of its activity may be attempting to influence legislation,
■ the organization may not intervene in political campaigns, and
■ the organization’s purposes and activities may not be illegal or violate fundamental public policy.
[/QUOTE]
Wait – “net earnings may not inure to the benefit of any private individual or shareholder.” Now I know there’s a way around this. Man, my church is gonna be so effing awesome.
You take a salary of course. And don’t forget the large communion chalice of sanctified whisky and the holy beer nuts… paid for from the collection plate.
Ding ding ding. There is absolutely no reason to cover the WBC at all. They have no influence on public policy or discourse, they are not popular, and they are 100% predictable. News outlets should ignore them, period. They’re not even worth Pitting, let alone coverage on national news networks. It’s too bad networks spend time on these people purely out of the hope the coverage will upset someone who can’t do anything about it.
Works for me. The definitive difference between a “church” and a “cult” is that the former is widely considered respectable and the latter is not; the Phelps jerkoffs certainly fall into the “not” category.
Well sure. Any salary you pay to yourself as Maximum Leader and Divinely-Inspired Prophet don’t count as “net earnings”, those are just the expenses of running your church. But AFAIK you’d still have to pay income taxes on them.
No, it doesn’t.
Exactly. They are trolls. Your outrage only feeds them.
This was actually a not uncommon tax dodge in the 70s-80s. I am a member of the Universal Life Church (one of those internet things that take a minute to become a minister and has such a super generic dogma that you don’t even have to believe in God), which was one of the big ones used for this purpose. These days it is mostly for people (like me) who want to get around local laws and be able to perform marriage ceremonies for their friends (I have done three), but there was a lot of tax dodging before the federal government came down hard on them.
These days they scrutinize individuals pretty closely.