Oh the other hand, there are a lot of legitimate religious establishments that are very small. Orthodox Jews are expected to meet for group prayer all the time, and it’s common for them to meet regularly in the living room of a neighbor to do this. There might be only 10 or 12 people praying, but it’s a legitimate religious gathering for religious purposes, not for tax purposes.
Bingo! Thanks.
Obviously there are many religions and/or beliefs that aren’t built around “believers in the name of Jesus” so perhaps rather than talking about churches specifically, assume one is talking about a house of worship generically.
This reads too Christian-centric to be true.
Does the Flying Spaghetti Monster Church qualify as a recogniced church in the USA? I have a colander I would like to gold plate it as an expense.
Speaking of gold plating: Has nobody told Trump yet of this possibility? Sounds like he would like it, being anointed Popissimus maximus urbi et orbi and no more taxes. He could pardon his soul! He would be worshipped!
He’s pretty much done all that without creating a church. Doing it the hard way is for over-thinkers like L. Ron Hubbard.
Punching
fake church for tax avoidance
into Google returns a bunch of examples of people getting in trouble, but my spot-checking shows much more extreme attempts than what you outlined.
People tried this scam in the 1980s with the Universal Life Church.
My bro was a IRS agent then, and it was cracked down on.
Yes, you can have your own church, but there will be no significant tax advantages.
The parsonage allowance is reported on a W2, and yes, the IRS can rule it taxable income.
Religion is an interest of mine and I’m most familiar with Christian doctrine. So I’m familiar with this principle in Christianity. But, Christian thought does not directly translate to secular law/regulation.
A few people are also mentioning buildings/real estate. A church as a distinct legal and financial entity can exist with one, many, or no pieces of real estate. There have been several instances of SOCAS advocates upset that public schools were renting (or granting, sans payment) their spaces to congregations that had no real estate in which to worship. So a church (body of believers) organized as a church (distinct legal entity) without a church (building located on real estate).
Perhaps this has changed a lot since the 80s. That was long before the Warren decision, an apparent moratorium on church audits in 09 (had this even been lifted), and the additional official obstruction to initiating investigations mentioned upthread.
The thing about these ‘scams’ is that they are not scams at all because of their nature, they are simply avoiding taxes in the same manner as other ‘real’ churches. They are only regarded as scams because the scale is small enough to benefit individual citizens or families, rather than the large-capitalization religion industry.
It seems like the authorities don’t worry about billionaires paying taxes on their ventures, since their clients, employees, etc. will be paying taxes. Private citizens don’t have the resources to set up companies with the capital, legal infrastructure, and legislative influence to avoid taxes the way Amazon or IBM can. But, religion is not as regulated as publicly traded and (theoretically) taxed companies.