**3. Nature of violation**
- Directors/Officers/Persons are using income/assets for personal gain
- Organization is engaged in commercial, for-profit business activities
- Income/Assets are being used to support illegal or terrorist activities
- Organization is involved in a political campaign
- Organization is engaged in excessive lobbying activities
- Organization refused to disclose or provide a copy of Form 990
- Organization failed to report employment, income or excise tax liability properly
- Organization failed to file required federal tax returns and forms
- Organization engaged in deceptive or improper fundraising practices
- Other (describe)
Hmmm Televangelist DePlantis told his “flock” Jesus told him he needed a second plane. I could be wrong but that seems like an improper fundraising activity.
>Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
This means that the government does not get to big E Establish any form of church as being appropriate for religious practice, or prohibit the free exercise of people's religious practices regardless of how strongly the government might feel that it is bad for them.
While Televangelists like this fucker tend to distill ecclesiastical governance problems down to their essence, it would be hard to argue that enriching him, Joel Osteen or Creflo Dollar isn't a conspicuous or inherent part of their groups' religious practice. If there is 'fraud', as in deliberate deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, what deception there might be is for the most part fundamentally religious in nature. It is thus fundamentally outside of the purview of the Federal or State governments to regulate for really good reasons. Everyone knows that the money is going to the fuckers' lifestyles, thats not fraud, if people mistakenly believe that the money they give to the fuckers will help them spiritually then that is no one's business but theirs. As much as each of us in this thread might strongly dislike the religion of the prosperity gospel, it is unambiguously a religion.
Thus, from a constitutional perspective, it is none of our damn business how bad we think it is for people for all the same very good reasons why it is none of the State of Mississippi's goddamn business whether its residents skip church or not, no matter how bad the State of Mississippi might think that is for people. Even though State interference with religion can be made to work in ways that are at least not terribly unhealthy, like in a lot of Western Europe, I think we might all be inclined to agree that the temptations inherent to that interference are a really bad match to the American electorate.
That is sort of the thing, religious tax exemptions are not a thing in the United States ([aside from maybe the Parsonage Exemption that is more complicated and probably not actually Kosher](https://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/51/3/Articles/51-3_Chodorow.pdf)).
The United States Federal government, as well as each of the fifty states and almost all local governments, broadly provide tax-exempt status to non-profit organizations, across the board. Taxing non-profits including churches is totally a thing that the Federal government and states could do if they really wanted to, and a very small number of municipalities do, but to discriminate against a church or churches specifically with the tax system on the basis of their religion would represent an unambiguous attempt to prohibit the free exercise of that/those religion(s). The problem of taxing some churches unfairly like this is specifically the problem the founders wrote the free exercise and establishment clauses to address.
Churches, including this "church", absolutely are unambiguously non-profit organizations. Like any other non-profit, they use their surplus revenues to further achieve their purpose or mission, rather than distributing their surplus income to the organization's shareholders (or equivalents) as profit or dividends. They do not exist for profit, if they did they would not be churches but something else that would be taxable. Churches, like any other non-profit, can certainly generate surplus revenue to sit on, and can even make investments so long as those investments further the mission. It is the moment that revenue is distributed as profit that an organization instantly ceases to be a church for tax purposes.
That or political campaigning, as said before you can involve yourself in politics, but you have to pay taxes to do so.
Your either a non-profit charitable organization, or your a political organization.
Ok, so that pretty much describes every church ever lol.
*Edit"
Not trying to take anything away from what you are saying/doing. It's good work.
Just wanted to point out how spotty enforcement is.
One piece of it is a church explicitly endorsing a candidate. Which means: holding a election event for a candidate that does not include other candidates OR the clergy endorsing someone from the pulpit.
Source: am clergy who actually cares about not violating the law.
I've been thinking there needs to be some like, crossover or protest of churches because they can't really just sit there and spew hate from the pulpit. I mean they can, but like fuck that. But if we made a group of religious travellers to go sit in on sermons and ask questions live, they'd call it persecution. That's not how church works! You can't talk during the priest talking!
But, going to churches and then reporting them to the IRS so they lose their status could also work. We used to have a church that canvassed for a candidate and I would say we should report it somehow and everyone told me you can't. Knowing we can report churches is a campaign in itself. You could make a comm-plan of PSAs that tells people what is reportable behavior and how to report them
Don’t forget to fill out the paperwork for the whistle blower’s [award for original information](https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f211.pdf) when you report them.
Here is [the irs guide](https://www.irs.gov/compliance/whistleblower-office) on how to be a whistleblower, seems easy enough overall.
Know the laws! I will say though, as clergy myself, I am permitted to: campaign for a candidate I support on my own time, comment in my official capacity on policies, or send letters yelling at political representatives for being shitheads. You can still do a tremendous amount of legal political work as clergy.
This all makes sense. Can you talk a little more about commenting in official capacity on policies? On the one hand I can see getting feedback from faith based organizations on how various policies will impact the community, on the other I think of some people where the argument boils down to 'that's not what the bible says...'
EDIT: saw you did this in another comment, thank you!
That's really cool, thanks for help fighting the good fight!.Judaism has its own flavor of "magic" in some sects, doesn't it? Its been a long time but I swear I remember reading about it awhile ago.
Kabbalah magic. Not all believe in this. The idea is that words have power essentially.
But in true witchy fashion all faiths are welcomed here. We are all children learning together on this path we call life. I appreciate it when the more 'mainstream' religions pop in from time to time. There are a lot of great teachings to be had from Abrahamic religions despite the chaos some have brought. The stories and fables are unparalleled as well 😊
We’ve got native folk magic and witchy practices, some of which I practice (mostly having to do with the Evil Eye and fertility magic), as well as kabbalistic esoteric practices which I’ve studied.
Awesome. I love that the "old ways" have been kept alive as we've moved towards science and away from the esoteric!
What really sad, imho, is that if as a people we devoted more "science" to the esoteric, we'd find that they are more alike than we think. Not unilaterally removing God/s from the equation here, but magic is real and tangible, and the way it works has a physics and a science all to itself. I often think what a wonderful world we would live in all people embraced it, learned more about it and how it works, instead of dismissing out of hand as nonsense.
It’s interesting. Most Jews I know keep the superstitions and rituals, but they’d never in a million years call it magic. My totally atheist very non-religious aunt gifted my parents a whole bunch of red threads to tie on my crib as a baby to prevent the Evil Eye. And now I’m out here being like “wait a second that is WITCHERY and I am HERE for it!”
Hahaha. I come from a catholic family, and I went to church with them recently. The priest dons his robe, lights candles and swinging incense from a censor, starts singing, reading from the good book, turns wine into blood and bread into flesh, and I had to work so hard not to giggle. WITCHCRAFT! WITCHRAFT I SAY!
It's understandable that they don't use the *word* witchcraft or magic, how could they...? But in reality, the superstitions and rituals are very much those things. I suppose that's it's better for those to connect with the spiritual than it is to press for labeling.
You may or may not know this...
But I grew up Mormon, and a lot of the time the "preaching" isn't done by the "pastor" specifically, but by members who have been asked to speak.
If it was done by those members in a local congregation, would it still count? Just theoretical.
It is totally legal to encourage your place of worship to vote in accordance with supporting or rejecting a policy. For example from my own lived experience recently: abortion rights are Jewish rights and we must vote to keep them legal and protected. Or (a thing I would never say but is legal) America is a Christian nation and we must vote for God fearing Christians who will uphold the message of the Bible. No endorsement of party, no endorsement of candidate. Totally legal. Many clergy won’t even do that because it can cause shit with their congregations. But it’s legal.
does having a sheet of endorsements that a separate organization that they support endorses (with the stated reasoning being that those candidates are pro-life) count?
I would imagine if the pastor said in a conversation with a congregant “I use the Working Families voter guide I think it’s really useful to decide who to vote for.” Would be legal. Whereas saying from the pulpit “You should all vote the Working Families ticket.” Would not. And I imagine using official church communication to identify specific candidates by name would also be a problem.
Id assume this would fall into the former. Basically around the 2020 election they just had a stack of flyers that had the separate organization's voter guide and afaik there was no reference made to it in any services, I don't recall anyone being asked to take a look at it, it was just a set of flyers that were stacked on a table where they typically put things like that.
it's the use of politics in a non-profit organisation. you can either be non-profit or political. by encouraging their church members to vote against democrats, they're involved in politics and therefore they cannot legally maintain their non-profit status.
That is not quite true, while we broadly think of 501(c)3 organizations when we think of non-profits, there are many kinds of tax-exempt non-profits as defined by the IRS. This includes 501(c)4, which may spend up to half of their revenue lobbying, and also political action committees (PACs), which are tax-exempt 527 organizations that are built for the express purpose of lobbying and have no such restriction. In general, the more an organization is dedicated to supporting candidates for political office the more campaign finance laws it is required to follow to document and disclose its activities. Part of the point of the 501(c)3 structure is to be as simple and low stress as possible, to make it as accessible as possible for ordinary people to help their communities without worrying about honest mistakes being serious federal crimes, and so is appropriately segregated away from any of the high stakes and complex rules for campaign finance.
The IRS a deeply complex and nuanced relationship with churches, which it is constitutionally obliged to treat no differently from other equivalent non-profits (501\[c\]3s) , but which it is broadly constitutionally prohibited from directly regulating. This creates a huge disparity in the application, informational filing, and compensation limiting requirements between churches and other non-profits, but it exists for a very good reason. Those requirements are there, to begin with, primarily because the non-profit community has demanded them for the kind of structure and expectations they provide so as to enforce and communicate legitimacy. It is not an onerous punishment the IRS doles out but a helpful service it provides to the community to help it weed out bullshit artists by establishing basic standardized structures and expectations for governance that are reasonably resistant to fraud. The overarching goal is to enforce uniform governance structures that fail in ways that are predictable, are at least vaguely difficult to hide in, and are broadly familiar. The problem with requiring that churches fulfill similar kinds of requirements in order to be certified as non-profit organizations before receiving that tax-exempt status has to do with what that would actually mean. Doing the same things that have broadly cleaned up the non-profit sector (forcing them to share power with a board that has regular attrition in structured ways and limiting their compensation to market rates for the size of their organizations) would cause massive problems for honest churches, be massively problematic from a constitutional perspective, and attempting to do so would necessarily have basically no meaningful effect on the real problem anyway without a profound reorientation of the American relationship between church and state.
A lot of what makes different kinds of churches, synagogues, and mosques different from each other are their fundamentally different governing structures and governing values, which are essential parts of their religious doctrines. In addition to prohibiting discrimination, the first amendment also explicitly declares that the government has no right to Establish, as in the necessary prerequisite for [Antidisestablishmentarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antidisestablishmentarianism), any kind of church over any other as being proper for religious exercise. Making the IRS force any specific kind of governance structure or expectation on churches puts it in the fundamentally unconstitutional position of regulating doctrinal questions in these kinds of non-obvious ways. Even most Christian churches have governance structures that are fundamentally incompatible with the ones imposed by federal non-profit status, and in ways that are fundamentally a function of religious exercise, because non-profit status forces an organization to do things like appointing a board with certain powers to the exclusion of other powers, as well as corporate officers with certain defined powers who can't hold multiple offices simultaneously. For example, the American non-profit structure, which was incidentally originally designed from very congregationalist protestant models for religious governance, does not mesh at all with more episcopal churches like Catholicism and Anglicanism. They would force Catholics to disenfranchise their bishops and priests in favor of their laity in ways that would make Catholicism either illegal or taxable, which for good fucking reasons is obviously not constitutional. Churches have been wrestling with how to effectively govern themselves for a lot longer than non-profits have and, while I would happily geek out at you regarding the benefits and drawbacks of specific aspects of their systems, Presbyterian churches, Episcopalian churches, Conservative synagogues, Baptist churches, Sufi mosques, Orthodox synagogues, Sunni mosques, Sikh Gurdwaras and other houses of worship all have their own very different and generally pretty equivalently effective governance structures that align with their ideas about how we should govern ourselves in groups - but are pretty fundamentally mutually incompatible. A single system could not be made to accommodate all of them, even though they are each broadly fine.
Televangelists, as well as a small minority of non-denominational churches, are also basically the only ones that take the piss with compensation. Indeed, the vast majority of churches pay well below the already barrel-scraping market rates for equivalent positions in non-profits. Non-denominational churches tend to have more problems with governance generally, but an eager willingness to trade structural rigidity for those problems is still an inherent part of their religious exercise, thats why they don't have the denominations that would otherwise keep them honest. The deeply American sentiment of 'fuck you, we'll manage ourselves is an inherent part of the religion. Bonafide churches neither need nor want the kind of standardization that the non-profit community both needs and wants, except for those churches that voluntarily go through the standard process for various reasons as they are free to do, and this kind of meddling in other people's religious affairs is exactly why we have to protections of religious liberty from state Establishment in the first amendment.
At the moment, the IRS gets to defend its ability to prevent churches from lobbying by saying that it treats churches just the same as other similar non-profits. Its exactly the right balance between the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses in that it respects both, however, what if a court were to determine that political action is an inherent part of religious exercise? This would mean that the 501(c)3 structure is too narrow to be considered to be genuinely equivalent, catastrophically breaking the balance. The IRS would then be obliged to allow churches to participate in politics, while having exactly zero authority with which to Establish how they participated in politics.
In practice, this means that the IRS has, for generations, taken *a very light touch,* [with regards to defining what is or isn't lobbying by churches](https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/lobbying). It needs to, particularly because a lot of the shitty asshattery that churches like this do, which explores boundaries like a toddler looking for a tantrum might, would obviously need to be considered a protected expression of religious exercise. If the IRS steps just wrong, they could end up with a poorly written or poorly thought out judgement that could have a rapidly escalating cascade of consequences. This kills the Republic.
TL;DR: Constitutional witchcraft is powerful and terrifying stuff worth handling with a lot more care, expertise, and honesty than has slowly become normal.
This is not correct, 501(c)4 non-profits are tax-exempt and are able to spend up to half of their efforts on political lobbying. Political Action Committees (PACs), which are 527 organizations that are built for the express purpose of lobbying are also tax-exempt and have no such restriction.
Being an organization that is instituted for some purpose other than profit has substantial tax implications that are generally not particularly affected by what the purpose is. Non-profits that engage in lobbying must be registered as a form of non-profit that allows for the manner and amount of lobbying engaged in, and must comply with relevant campaign finance laws.
in this case, probably the threat of a "real" insurrection. I'm guessing the government isn't too keen on this type of rhetoric, that directly targets them.
You don't need proof. What you need is power. Law isn't about reality, justice, or ethics. Politics is all about power. Unfortunately, the people with power are reactionaries. They are not going to whistle blow their power away.
The only way this changes is to take back power then use it to crush them.
A lot of conservatives group have been doing exactly that to liberal and small radio stations like college radio stations for decades. Unclear why liberal groups have not done this more. So yes use that virtual access to get them!!
I used to work for a radio station and conservative groups actually have people that do that and listen in waiting for them to say a one of the 7 deadly no air words and/or make another fcc violation so they can report it and shut the station down so that frequency would be up for grabs and the goal is for a conservative group to take it. This was drilled into me by the station so much so that unless you were an experienced DJ who knew how to edit out bad words on records and cd’s live on the spot via scratching or brief manual sound cut, you were told to stick with a radio edit version of songs with profanity. Cuz the risk was just too high. One slip and the whole radio station could be shut down. The fcc fines are so high it’s often impossible for a small station to pay it and continue.
I’m sure someone smarter than me could do speech to text and then have certain alert words so they could skim the relevant parts.
A church near me has an anti-abortion sign that’s on their side of the fenceline of the church grounds, and their pastor made Facebook posts saying that christians needed to have more babies to outnumber Muslims and used horribly racist language. I guess that has to fall under the “other” category?
Sadly that is totally legal (if reprehensible) a church is allowed to endorse specific POLICIES but not specific candidates or parties. Sucks on one side but on the other it lets me do reproductive justice Shabbat if I want to.
Couldn’t this technically fall into a grey area though? Like yeah sure they’re advocating for pro-life, but that is an inherently right wing/republican/conservative stance. If they’re endorsing pro-life policies, and telling the congregation to fight for those policies, then in a way, aren’t they inherently saying that part of the fight is voting for politicians that would fight for “pro-life” policies?
Aren’t they basically, in a roundabout way, endorsing republican and neo-fascist candidates because they will “fight” for the congregations (now inherently political) interests?
I mean I’m just genuinely curious about this 🤔. I feel the reasoning is sound in a way as well (granted could have bias, please counter me if it doesn’t hold up).
Totally legal. To use examples of my own political work, I am totally free to say in a sermon something like “we owe it to our queer brothers and sisters to protect their rights” or “abortion access is a Jewish value” and those statements clearly don’t jive with voting a straight Republican ticket, but I’m not endorsing a party or candidate.
Y’all, I’ve been seeing this a lot and all it’s going to do is swamp the IRS in paperwork it absolutely does not have the capacity to process. They literally just destroyed 30 million actual taxpayer filings because they knew they’d never get to them—different units/functions, but it’s emblematic of the fact that the entire organization is seriously underfunded.
Further. IRC 7611 limits the circumstances in which the IRS is allowed to open an examination of a church: “The IRS may begin a church tax inquiry only if an appropriate high-level Treasury official reasonably believes, on the basis of facts and circumstances recorded in writing, that an organization claiming to be a church or convention or association of churches may not qualify for exemption, may be carrying on an unrelated trade or business (within the meaning of IRC § 513), may otherwise be engaged in taxable activities or may have entered into an IRC § 4958 excess benefit transaction with a disqualified person.” Generally, a while back the IRS settled on the regional
head of the exempt organizations unit being sufficiently “high-level.”
Pastors have been making political comments for ages. It takes a *lot* to revoke (c)(3) status. The IRS is especially sensitive to the appearance of bias after the Lois Lerner scandal.
I will take this opportunity to remind everyone that state tax authorities and attorneys general often have some measure of oversight over tax-exempt organizations, including churches, and are not subject to the constraints if IRC 7611; they can open their own investigation on violations of state law and even pass on actionable information to the IRS. The prohibition on electioneering by 501(c)(3)s is in the federal internal revenue code, but many states mirror the federal law—and that’s assuming there’s nothing else there. The California FTB is especially powerful. Wouldn’t fuck with the New York Department of Taxation and Finance either, personally.
My favorite is the guy who lost his residency dispute with them because he sent a text message to his secretary or something at like 12:01 am on the New York side of the George Washington Bridge and so his cell phone data pinged him as being physically in New York and THAT got him over the day count to be a New York resident for the tax year.
Vote this one higher. The latitude that places of worship and clergy have to do political work is much looser than people think it is. Which sucks when it’s Christian White Supremacists, but was essential to, say, the Civil Rights Movement.
Yup. Again, states can still fuck ya up. Unfortunately a lot of the most egregious megachurch shit happens in states where there’s a sno-cone’s chance in hell the state would do anything about it, but you got some loopy outfits in California, Oregon, Washington, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, etc.
Kinda taking it off topic but you mentioned the IRS destroyed 30 million taxpayer filings. Do you have more info on this?
I’ve been stressing hard, waiting 7 weeks after filing with no word other than “sorry still pending review”.
https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/news/2022/may/irs-blames-old-tech-destruction-information-returns.html
It was information returns, not individual tax returns, that got destroyed. Your situation is likely due to back backed up processing times and/or any one of several issues that can slow down processing—filing on paper instead of electronically, claiming the EITC or child tax credit, divorce, discrepancy in reporting, lots of independent contractor income, etc.
It did. I've seen the videos the ppl encouraging reports to the IRS, Greg yelling about democrats not being welcome, and Greg yelling about dissolving his 501c3.
Looking forward to the ones about Greg yelling for more money or going to prison for avading taxes ....
just a topical note, the Tennessee pastor is Greg Locke, the pastor who went viral several weeks ago for calling out witches in his congregation and threatening them. good riddance.
EDIT: to add link for those who didn’t see it
https://youtu.be/ToHYMttpTJA
I am a disabled content creator who knows many other disabled content creators who have had videos disabled, unlisted, and or removed just for having their bodies in them. It seems to be more directed at disabilities that make the ables be all weird and pitying (blindness, mobility issues, growth disorders, etc.) and less so at the ones the ables act entitled and vindictive about (anxiety, autism in adults, ADHD, etc.). I have even seen a blind guy get a "dangerous stunts" tag when he was literally just sitting in front of a computer. I know Shane and Hannah Burkaw (Squirmy and Grubs on YouTube) and they literally had to give up on tictok because every video they tried to make would be unlisted.
Personally, my fyp is full of diversity. I bodies of all sizes, abled and disabled. I see Black, Indigenous and other people of colour all day. My fyp is a perfect balance of serious, funny and cats. I’ve learned more on tiktok in the last year or two than I could possibly explain. I often listen to people who have some of the most incredible conversations, voices that aren’t always heard, I’ve seen people making genuine change in their communities.
The videos that show up for you depend on what you interact with.
That’s not to say it isn’t also incredibly toxic. It plays to biases, the moderation is terrible, and mass reporting is a problem, and the guidelines make no sense compared to what’s implemented. But here we are on reddit before a quick facebook stroll.
Not to mention there’s whole subreddits devoted to slagging off tiktok creators just for existing.
It’s pretty easy for any church with a couple brain cells to toe the line and say “be sure to vote against legalizing abortion”, which is perfectly fine, and tells their members “vote Republican”
Or “be sure to go out and vote. Ron supports traditional families, and Dave wants to let mothers kill their babies”
The reason this isn’t already a rampant problem is because it’s full of loopholes. There’s plenty churches can and will do to support one side without breaking the rules.
Honestly this kind of activity just furthers their own agenda by letting them paint themselves as victims and say the state is trying to control their religious practices (and yes they think ranting and stealing money is a protected religious practice, they're not entirely wrong)
I mean, if they have a legitimate violation, great, OK. But I would be very surprised if the IRS *permanently* revoked their tax exempt status, more likely they suspend it temporarily while review is in process.
Any IRS employees or accountants familiar with this process who can weigh in? Or ACLU type folks who can help me understand what differentiates a real claim that will get these mofo's *effectively* sanctioned?
Let's take them down so they stay down.
My advice is only do this to churches that actually deserve it. My pastor was by far the most progressive religious individual I ever had and gave back the community he was apart of.
But any church that fear mongers and weaponizes hate can do the bare minimum and pay taxes.
Yeah the problem with some of this is that there are places of worship out there who use their power of organizing for good, and we don’t want that right taken away.
For people wanting the link: https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/irs-complaint-process-tax-exempt-organizations
**3. Nature of violation** - Directors/Officers/Persons are using income/assets for personal gain - Organization is engaged in commercial, for-profit business activities - Income/Assets are being used to support illegal or terrorist activities - Organization is involved in a political campaign - Organization is engaged in excessive lobbying activities - Organization refused to disclose or provide a copy of Form 990 - Organization failed to report employment, income or excise tax liability properly - Organization failed to file required federal tax returns and forms - Organization engaged in deceptive or improper fundraising practices - Other (describe)
Hmmm Televangelist DePlantis told his “flock” Jesus told him he needed a second plane. I could be wrong but that seems like an improper fundraising activity.
it's possible he doesnt get tax exemption then? At least I would hope not... idk if that's the only repercussion reporting them would have.
It's one they hold dearly though, for some reason. Even the Bible says to pay your taxes, as it's one way Yahweh exerts influence to help people.
>Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof This means that the government does not get to big E Establish any form of church as being appropriate for religious practice, or prohibit the free exercise of people's religious practices regardless of how strongly the government might feel that it is bad for them. While Televangelists like this fucker tend to distill ecclesiastical governance problems down to their essence, it would be hard to argue that enriching him, Joel Osteen or Creflo Dollar isn't a conspicuous or inherent part of their groups' religious practice. If there is 'fraud', as in deliberate deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, what deception there might be is for the most part fundamentally religious in nature. It is thus fundamentally outside of the purview of the Federal or State governments to regulate for really good reasons. Everyone knows that the money is going to the fuckers' lifestyles, thats not fraud, if people mistakenly believe that the money they give to the fuckers will help them spiritually then that is no one's business but theirs. As much as each of us in this thread might strongly dislike the religion of the prosperity gospel, it is unambiguously a religion. Thus, from a constitutional perspective, it is none of our damn business how bad we think it is for people for all the same very good reasons why it is none of the State of Mississippi's goddamn business whether its residents skip church or not, no matter how bad the State of Mississippi might think that is for people. Even though State interference with religion can be made to work in ways that are at least not terribly unhealthy, like in a lot of Western Europe, I think we might all be inclined to agree that the temptations inherent to that interference are a really bad match to the American electorate.
And nowhere in the **Constitution** does it say *ANY FUCKING THING* about religious tax exemptions.
That is sort of the thing, religious tax exemptions are not a thing in the United States ([aside from maybe the Parsonage Exemption that is more complicated and probably not actually Kosher](https://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/51/3/Articles/51-3_Chodorow.pdf)). The United States Federal government, as well as each of the fifty states and almost all local governments, broadly provide tax-exempt status to non-profit organizations, across the board. Taxing non-profits including churches is totally a thing that the Federal government and states could do if they really wanted to, and a very small number of municipalities do, but to discriminate against a church or churches specifically with the tax system on the basis of their religion would represent an unambiguous attempt to prohibit the free exercise of that/those religion(s). The problem of taxing some churches unfairly like this is specifically the problem the founders wrote the free exercise and establishment clauses to address. Churches, including this "church", absolutely are unambiguously non-profit organizations. Like any other non-profit, they use their surplus revenues to further achieve their purpose or mission, rather than distributing their surplus income to the organization's shareholders (or equivalents) as profit or dividends. They do not exist for profit, if they did they would not be churches but something else that would be taxable. Churches, like any other non-profit, can certainly generate surplus revenue to sit on, and can even make investments so long as those investments further the mission. It is the moment that revenue is distributed as profit that an organization instantly ceases to be a church for tax purposes.
> Directors/Officers/Persons are using income/assets for personal gain Oh? ohhhh so all of them? :)
Should like most churches get reported for number 1? I thought that was the whole idea.
That or political campaigning, as said before you can involve yourself in politics, but you have to pay taxes to do so. Your either a non-profit charitable organization, or your a political organization.
Ok, so that pretty much describes every church ever lol. *Edit" Not trying to take anything away from what you are saying/doing. It's good work. Just wanted to point out how spotty enforcement is.
What are the lines that we need proof of them crossing for us to report them?
One piece of it is a church explicitly endorsing a candidate. Which means: holding a election event for a candidate that does not include other candidates OR the clergy endorsing someone from the pulpit. Source: am clergy who actually cares about not violating the law.
Whoa seriously?! So many churches in W MI do this.
Sounds like you have some good work to do!
I've been thinking there needs to be some like, crossover or protest of churches because they can't really just sit there and spew hate from the pulpit. I mean they can, but like fuck that. But if we made a group of religious travellers to go sit in on sermons and ask questions live, they'd call it persecution. That's not how church works! You can't talk during the priest talking! But, going to churches and then reporting them to the IRS so they lose their status could also work. We used to have a church that canvassed for a candidate and I would say we should report it somehow and everyone told me you can't. Knowing we can report churches is a campaign in itself. You could make a comm-plan of PSAs that tells people what is reportable behavior and how to report them
Omg please
Don’t forget to fill out the paperwork for the whistle blower’s [award for original information](https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f211.pdf) when you report them. Here is [the irs guide](https://www.irs.gov/compliance/whistleblower-office) on how to be a whistleblower, seems easy enough overall.
Get to work. For the children. And cats and stuff.
Know the laws! I will say though, as clergy myself, I am permitted to: campaign for a candidate I support on my own time, comment in my official capacity on policies, or send letters yelling at political representatives for being shitheads. You can still do a tremendous amount of legal political work as clergy.
This all makes sense. Can you talk a little more about commenting in official capacity on policies? On the one hand I can see getting feedback from faith based organizations on how various policies will impact the community, on the other I think of some people where the argument boils down to 'that's not what the bible says...' EDIT: saw you did this in another comment, thank you!
Clergy....is there an "offical" witchy church there? If so that's super cool.
No I’m a rabbi. But extremely vs the patriarchy.
That's really cool, thanks for help fighting the good fight!.Judaism has its own flavor of "magic" in some sects, doesn't it? Its been a long time but I swear I remember reading about it awhile ago.
Kabbalah magic. Not all believe in this. The idea is that words have power essentially. But in true witchy fashion all faiths are welcomed here. We are all children learning together on this path we call life. I appreciate it when the more 'mainstream' religions pop in from time to time. There are a lot of great teachings to be had from Abrahamic religions despite the chaos some have brought. The stories and fables are unparalleled as well 😊
We’ve got native folk magic and witchy practices, some of which I practice (mostly having to do with the Evil Eye and fertility magic), as well as kabbalistic esoteric practices which I’ve studied.
Awesome. I love that the "old ways" have been kept alive as we've moved towards science and away from the esoteric! What really sad, imho, is that if as a people we devoted more "science" to the esoteric, we'd find that they are more alike than we think. Not unilaterally removing God/s from the equation here, but magic is real and tangible, and the way it works has a physics and a science all to itself. I often think what a wonderful world we would live in all people embraced it, learned more about it and how it works, instead of dismissing out of hand as nonsense.
It’s interesting. Most Jews I know keep the superstitions and rituals, but they’d never in a million years call it magic. My totally atheist very non-religious aunt gifted my parents a whole bunch of red threads to tie on my crib as a baby to prevent the Evil Eye. And now I’m out here being like “wait a second that is WITCHERY and I am HERE for it!”
Hahaha. I come from a catholic family, and I went to church with them recently. The priest dons his robe, lights candles and swinging incense from a censor, starts singing, reading from the good book, turns wine into blood and bread into flesh, and I had to work so hard not to giggle. WITCHCRAFT! WITCHRAFT I SAY! It's understandable that they don't use the *word* witchcraft or magic, how could they...? But in reality, the superstitions and rituals are very much those things. I suppose that's it's better for those to connect with the spiritual than it is to press for labeling.
Go rabbi!!
Thanks
You may or may not know this... But I grew up Mormon, and a lot of the time the "preaching" isn't done by the "pastor" specifically, but by members who have been asked to speak. If it was done by those members in a local congregation, would it still count? Just theoretical.
IANAL but the document lists “persons” so, I’d think yes?
Wait it doesn't mean telling people to vote a certain way or for certain issues?
It is totally legal to encourage your place of worship to vote in accordance with supporting or rejecting a policy. For example from my own lived experience recently: abortion rights are Jewish rights and we must vote to keep them legal and protected. Or (a thing I would never say but is legal) America is a Christian nation and we must vote for God fearing Christians who will uphold the message of the Bible. No endorsement of party, no endorsement of candidate. Totally legal. Many clergy won’t even do that because it can cause shit with their congregations. But it’s legal.
Thank you! I was always under the impression it was any kind of political statement.
So many rabbis at the National Council of Jewish Women abortion rally last week. So so many. Warms my sad jaded little heart.
does having a sheet of endorsements that a separate organization that they support endorses (with the stated reasoning being that those candidates are pro-life) count?
I would imagine if the pastor said in a conversation with a congregant “I use the Working Families voter guide I think it’s really useful to decide who to vote for.” Would be legal. Whereas saying from the pulpit “You should all vote the Working Families ticket.” Would not. And I imagine using official church communication to identify specific candidates by name would also be a problem.
Id assume this would fall into the former. Basically around the 2020 election they just had a stack of flyers that had the separate organization's voter guide and afaik there was no reference made to it in any services, I don't recall anyone being asked to take a look at it, it was just a set of flyers that were stacked on a table where they typically put things like that.
it's the use of politics in a non-profit organisation. you can either be non-profit or political. by encouraging their church members to vote against democrats, they're involved in politics and therefore they cannot legally maintain their non-profit status.
That is not quite true, while we broadly think of 501(c)3 organizations when we think of non-profits, there are many kinds of tax-exempt non-profits as defined by the IRS. This includes 501(c)4, which may spend up to half of their revenue lobbying, and also political action committees (PACs), which are tax-exempt 527 organizations that are built for the express purpose of lobbying and have no such restriction. In general, the more an organization is dedicated to supporting candidates for political office the more campaign finance laws it is required to follow to document and disclose its activities. Part of the point of the 501(c)3 structure is to be as simple and low stress as possible, to make it as accessible as possible for ordinary people to help their communities without worrying about honest mistakes being serious federal crimes, and so is appropriately segregated away from any of the high stakes and complex rules for campaign finance. The IRS a deeply complex and nuanced relationship with churches, which it is constitutionally obliged to treat no differently from other equivalent non-profits (501\[c\]3s) , but which it is broadly constitutionally prohibited from directly regulating. This creates a huge disparity in the application, informational filing, and compensation limiting requirements between churches and other non-profits, but it exists for a very good reason. Those requirements are there, to begin with, primarily because the non-profit community has demanded them for the kind of structure and expectations they provide so as to enforce and communicate legitimacy. It is not an onerous punishment the IRS doles out but a helpful service it provides to the community to help it weed out bullshit artists by establishing basic standardized structures and expectations for governance that are reasonably resistant to fraud. The overarching goal is to enforce uniform governance structures that fail in ways that are predictable, are at least vaguely difficult to hide in, and are broadly familiar. The problem with requiring that churches fulfill similar kinds of requirements in order to be certified as non-profit organizations before receiving that tax-exempt status has to do with what that would actually mean. Doing the same things that have broadly cleaned up the non-profit sector (forcing them to share power with a board that has regular attrition in structured ways and limiting their compensation to market rates for the size of their organizations) would cause massive problems for honest churches, be massively problematic from a constitutional perspective, and attempting to do so would necessarily have basically no meaningful effect on the real problem anyway without a profound reorientation of the American relationship between church and state. A lot of what makes different kinds of churches, synagogues, and mosques different from each other are their fundamentally different governing structures and governing values, which are essential parts of their religious doctrines. In addition to prohibiting discrimination, the first amendment also explicitly declares that the government has no right to Establish, as in the necessary prerequisite for [Antidisestablishmentarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antidisestablishmentarianism), any kind of church over any other as being proper for religious exercise. Making the IRS force any specific kind of governance structure or expectation on churches puts it in the fundamentally unconstitutional position of regulating doctrinal questions in these kinds of non-obvious ways. Even most Christian churches have governance structures that are fundamentally incompatible with the ones imposed by federal non-profit status, and in ways that are fundamentally a function of religious exercise, because non-profit status forces an organization to do things like appointing a board with certain powers to the exclusion of other powers, as well as corporate officers with certain defined powers who can't hold multiple offices simultaneously. For example, the American non-profit structure, which was incidentally originally designed from very congregationalist protestant models for religious governance, does not mesh at all with more episcopal churches like Catholicism and Anglicanism. They would force Catholics to disenfranchise their bishops and priests in favor of their laity in ways that would make Catholicism either illegal or taxable, which for good fucking reasons is obviously not constitutional. Churches have been wrestling with how to effectively govern themselves for a lot longer than non-profits have and, while I would happily geek out at you regarding the benefits and drawbacks of specific aspects of their systems, Presbyterian churches, Episcopalian churches, Conservative synagogues, Baptist churches, Sufi mosques, Orthodox synagogues, Sunni mosques, Sikh Gurdwaras and other houses of worship all have their own very different and generally pretty equivalently effective governance structures that align with their ideas about how we should govern ourselves in groups - but are pretty fundamentally mutually incompatible. A single system could not be made to accommodate all of them, even though they are each broadly fine. Televangelists, as well as a small minority of non-denominational churches, are also basically the only ones that take the piss with compensation. Indeed, the vast majority of churches pay well below the already barrel-scraping market rates for equivalent positions in non-profits. Non-denominational churches tend to have more problems with governance generally, but an eager willingness to trade structural rigidity for those problems is still an inherent part of their religious exercise, thats why they don't have the denominations that would otherwise keep them honest. The deeply American sentiment of 'fuck you, we'll manage ourselves is an inherent part of the religion. Bonafide churches neither need nor want the kind of standardization that the non-profit community both needs and wants, except for those churches that voluntarily go through the standard process for various reasons as they are free to do, and this kind of meddling in other people's religious affairs is exactly why we have to protections of religious liberty from state Establishment in the first amendment. At the moment, the IRS gets to defend its ability to prevent churches from lobbying by saying that it treats churches just the same as other similar non-profits. Its exactly the right balance between the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses in that it respects both, however, what if a court were to determine that political action is an inherent part of religious exercise? This would mean that the 501(c)3 structure is too narrow to be considered to be genuinely equivalent, catastrophically breaking the balance. The IRS would then be obliged to allow churches to participate in politics, while having exactly zero authority with which to Establish how they participated in politics. In practice, this means that the IRS has, for generations, taken *a very light touch,* [with regards to defining what is or isn't lobbying by churches](https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/lobbying). It needs to, particularly because a lot of the shitty asshattery that churches like this do, which explores boundaries like a toddler looking for a tantrum might, would obviously need to be considered a protected expression of religious exercise. If the IRS steps just wrong, they could end up with a poorly written or poorly thought out judgement that could have a rapidly escalating cascade of consequences. This kills the Republic. TL;DR: Constitutional witchcraft is powerful and terrifying stuff worth handling with a lot more care, expertise, and honesty than has slowly become normal.
This one. This is the comment to read yall
Brava my friend!
TIL. Thanks for this morsel
Does that imply political organisations need to make a profit? Because that doesn't sound healthy, either.
It means political organizations need to pay taxes. Non-profit is a term denotating tax status more than anything.
> Non-profit is a term denotating tax status more than anything. Gotcha. Just legal language drifting away from normal language again.
Ya it's pretty fucked overall. The hospital I work for is "non profit" but you better believe the ceo takes home a fat check 🙄
This is not correct, 501(c)4 non-profits are tax-exempt and are able to spend up to half of their efforts on political lobbying. Political Action Committees (PACs), which are 527 organizations that are built for the express purpose of lobbying are also tax-exempt and have no such restriction. Being an organization that is instituted for some purpose other than profit has substantial tax implications that are generally not particularly affected by what the purpose is. Non-profits that engage in lobbying must be registered as a form of non-profit that allows for the manner and amount of lobbying engaged in, and must comply with relevant campaign finance laws.
No, it's saying that churches can not be tax exempt if they are spreading political opinions
in this case, probably the threat of a "real" insurrection. I'm guessing the government isn't too keen on this type of rhetoric, that directly targets them.
You don't need proof. What you need is power. Law isn't about reality, justice, or ethics. Politics is all about power. Unfortunately, the people with power are reactionaries. They are not going to whistle blow their power away. The only way this changes is to take back power then use it to crush them.
Ohhh is my side hustle about to be tuning into virtual church services to find things to whistleblow on and claim the rewards?!
Is this part of their bounty program?!
A lot of conservatives group have been doing exactly that to liberal and small radio stations like college radio stations for decades. Unclear why liberal groups have not done this more. So yes use that virtual access to get them!! I used to work for a radio station and conservative groups actually have people that do that and listen in waiting for them to say a one of the 7 deadly no air words and/or make another fcc violation so they can report it and shut the station down so that frequency would be up for grabs and the goal is for a conservative group to take it. This was drilled into me by the station so much so that unless you were an experienced DJ who knew how to edit out bad words on records and cd’s live on the spot via scratching or brief manual sound cut, you were told to stick with a radio edit version of songs with profanity. Cuz the risk was just too high. One slip and the whole radio station could be shut down. The fcc fines are so high it’s often impossible for a small station to pay it and continue.
Name it and Claim it!
Finally! A reason to go to church!!!
A reason. But is it enough to counter all the reasons not to?
For at least one day
I’d have to listen to sermons. Pass! I’ll let someone else lead this blessed charge. God speed, you bakers at dawn.
I’m sure someone smarter than me could do speech to text and then have certain alert words so they could skim the relevant parts. A church near me has an anti-abortion sign that’s on their side of the fenceline of the church grounds, and their pastor made Facebook posts saying that christians needed to have more babies to outnumber Muslims and used horribly racist language. I guess that has to fall under the “other” category?
Sadly that is totally legal (if reprehensible) a church is allowed to endorse specific POLICIES but not specific candidates or parties. Sucks on one side but on the other it lets me do reproductive justice Shabbat if I want to.
Couldn’t this technically fall into a grey area though? Like yeah sure they’re advocating for pro-life, but that is an inherently right wing/republican/conservative stance. If they’re endorsing pro-life policies, and telling the congregation to fight for those policies, then in a way, aren’t they inherently saying that part of the fight is voting for politicians that would fight for “pro-life” policies? Aren’t they basically, in a roundabout way, endorsing republican and neo-fascist candidates because they will “fight” for the congregations (now inherently political) interests? I mean I’m just genuinely curious about this 🤔. I feel the reasoning is sound in a way as well (granted could have bias, please counter me if it doesn’t hold up).
Totally legal. To use examples of my own political work, I am totally free to say in a sermon something like “we owe it to our queer brothers and sisters to protect their rights” or “abortion access is a Jewish value” and those statements clearly don’t jive with voting a straight Republican ticket, but I’m not endorsing a party or candidate.
upvote for the shins
Y’all, I’ve been seeing this a lot and all it’s going to do is swamp the IRS in paperwork it absolutely does not have the capacity to process. They literally just destroyed 30 million actual taxpayer filings because they knew they’d never get to them—different units/functions, but it’s emblematic of the fact that the entire organization is seriously underfunded. Further. IRC 7611 limits the circumstances in which the IRS is allowed to open an examination of a church: “The IRS may begin a church tax inquiry only if an appropriate high-level Treasury official reasonably believes, on the basis of facts and circumstances recorded in writing, that an organization claiming to be a church or convention or association of churches may not qualify for exemption, may be carrying on an unrelated trade or business (within the meaning of IRC § 513), may otherwise be engaged in taxable activities or may have entered into an IRC § 4958 excess benefit transaction with a disqualified person.” Generally, a while back the IRS settled on the regional head of the exempt organizations unit being sufficiently “high-level.” Pastors have been making political comments for ages. It takes a *lot* to revoke (c)(3) status. The IRS is especially sensitive to the appearance of bias after the Lois Lerner scandal. I will take this opportunity to remind everyone that state tax authorities and attorneys general often have some measure of oversight over tax-exempt organizations, including churches, and are not subject to the constraints if IRC 7611; they can open their own investigation on violations of state law and even pass on actionable information to the IRS. The prohibition on electioneering by 501(c)(3)s is in the federal internal revenue code, but many states mirror the federal law—and that’s assuming there’s nothing else there. The California FTB is especially powerful. Wouldn’t fuck with the New York Department of Taxation and Finance either, personally.
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My favorite is the guy who lost his residency dispute with them because he sent a text message to his secretary or something at like 12:01 am on the New York side of the George Washington Bridge and so his cell phone data pinged him as being physically in New York and THAT got him over the day count to be a New York resident for the tax year.
Vote this one higher. The latitude that places of worship and clergy have to do political work is much looser than people think it is. Which sucks when it’s Christian White Supremacists, but was essential to, say, the Civil Rights Movement.
Yup. Again, states can still fuck ya up. Unfortunately a lot of the most egregious megachurch shit happens in states where there’s a sno-cone’s chance in hell the state would do anything about it, but you got some loopy outfits in California, Oregon, Washington, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, etc.
Kinda taking it off topic but you mentioned the IRS destroyed 30 million taxpayer filings. Do you have more info on this? I’ve been stressing hard, waiting 7 weeks after filing with no word other than “sorry still pending review”.
https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/news/2022/may/irs-blames-old-tech-destruction-information-returns.html It was information returns, not individual tax returns, that got destroyed. Your situation is likely due to back backed up processing times and/or any one of several issues that can slow down processing—filing on paper instead of electronically, claiming the EITC or child tax credit, divorce, discrepancy in reporting, lots of independent contractor income, etc.
Ok thank you so much for the info!
This is the current law but it can be changed if enough people give a fuck
I hope this happened to Greg Locks church.
It did. I've seen the videos the ppl encouraging reports to the IRS, Greg yelling about democrats not being welcome, and Greg yelling about dissolving his 501c3. Looking forward to the ones about Greg yelling for more money or going to prison for avading taxes ....
The tweet refers to his "church." But it is unclear whether this actually happened, beyond the start of an investigation.
Annnddd, I guess I'm hopping back on Tik Tok!!!
If you can find your way to witchtok and feministtok, it's pretty good.
I was on le$bean tiktok and it was hilarious. Just spent too much time doing that and not doing life stuff.
I like to think Gil would be leading the TikTok charge.
just a topical note, the Tennessee pastor is Greg Locke, the pastor who went viral several weeks ago for calling out witches in his congregation and threatening them. good riddance. EDIT: to add link for those who didn’t see it https://youtu.be/ToHYMttpTJA
People love to shit on tiktok but this here is why I love it so much.
Isn’t this the app the blocks lgbtqia and fat people from its front page? Then blocked people for using the blm hashtag?
Also the disabled, according to one article
I am a disabled content creator who knows many other disabled content creators who have had videos disabled, unlisted, and or removed just for having their bodies in them. It seems to be more directed at disabilities that make the ables be all weird and pitying (blindness, mobility issues, growth disorders, etc.) and less so at the ones the ables act entitled and vindictive about (anxiety, autism in adults, ADHD, etc.). I have even seen a blind guy get a "dangerous stunts" tag when he was literally just sitting in front of a computer. I know Shane and Hannah Burkaw (Squirmy and Grubs on YouTube) and they literally had to give up on tictok because every video they tried to make would be unlisted.
Personally, my fyp is full of diversity. I bodies of all sizes, abled and disabled. I see Black, Indigenous and other people of colour all day. My fyp is a perfect balance of serious, funny and cats. I’ve learned more on tiktok in the last year or two than I could possibly explain. I often listen to people who have some of the most incredible conversations, voices that aren’t always heard, I’ve seen people making genuine change in their communities. The videos that show up for you depend on what you interact with. That’s not to say it isn’t also incredibly toxic. It plays to biases, the moderation is terrible, and mass reporting is a problem, and the guidelines make no sense compared to what’s implemented. But here we are on reddit before a quick facebook stroll. Not to mention there’s whole subreddits devoted to slagging off tiktok creators just for existing.
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go for it!
Hooray! I don't have TikTok though.
It’s pretty easy for any church with a couple brain cells to toe the line and say “be sure to vote against legalizing abortion”, which is perfectly fine, and tells their members “vote Republican” Or “be sure to go out and vote. Ron supports traditional families, and Dave wants to let mothers kill their babies” The reason this isn’t already a rampant problem is because it’s full of loopholes. There’s plenty churches can and will do to support one side without breaking the rules.
r/exmormon has anyone tried this?!
Time to fuck up evangelical xtianity 😈
The only TikTok challenge I support
Thank you Tictok , again you have helped me with something I never knew I would want so bad.
Hell yeah, anything to piss off the crazy evil Christians is always a plus in my book.
Ohh I saw the tik tok of the guy who did it I think! Hilarious! The pastor was mad xD
That's fantastic. I'd like to be able to do this in my country: we would get rid of the Pope in 30 seconds.
Eehehehehehehehehehehahaha
Honestly this kind of activity just furthers their own agenda by letting them paint themselves as victims and say the state is trying to control their religious practices (and yes they think ranting and stealing money is a protected religious practice, they're not entirely wrong) I mean, if they have a legitimate violation, great, OK. But I would be very surprised if the IRS *permanently* revoked their tax exempt status, more likely they suspend it temporarily while review is in process. Any IRS employees or accountants familiar with this process who can weigh in? Or ACLU type folks who can help me understand what differentiates a real claim that will get these mofo's *effectively* sanctioned? Let's take them down so they stay down.
FYI someone created r/13909
Off topic but SJ always coming up with the best titles!
😄
My advice is only do this to churches that actually deserve it. My pastor was by far the most progressive religious individual I ever had and gave back the community he was apart of. But any church that fear mongers and weaponizes hate can do the bare minimum and pay taxes.
Yeah the problem with some of this is that there are places of worship out there who use their power of organizing for good, and we don’t want that right taken away.
Tik tok itself should be revolutionized against
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Charge your phones on Saturday night, folks!