Posted by:
midwestanon
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Date: February 12, 2017 08:02AM
Perhaps, but not every tax exempt organization, religious or otherwise, it's like the Mormon church or operates like the Mormon church. Some of them do good work, and need their tax exempt status in order to operate and fund their existence. Think about the kinds of faith-based organizations that run hospitals or clinics or give Healthcare to the needy or help out with things like housing. A good example that I could think of in Utah is the Fourth Street Clinic, right across the street from Pioneer Park. Thousands of people come in there every year and get completely free healthcare and free prescriptions. When I lived in Utah, it was a godsend two most of the folks I lived with, because most of them did not have health insurance, and were in that age range where they couldn't benefit from their parents health insurance if they even had any, and we're nowhere near old enough to benefit a from something like Medicare, and and their problems were not serious enough to qualify for something like Medicaid. For all I know the Fourth Street Clinic is completely funded through private donations, and I'm not exactly well versed on how a nonprofit organizations work, but if that organization had to pay taxes to the government for the donations they got, I'm sure that would make it a lot harder, or even impossible to treat all of those Indigent and homeless people for free. I'm pretty sure the motto of the place was ' healthcare for the homeless.'
Do organizations like the Church of Scientology or the Mormon Church deserves their tax-exempt status? Probably not. I certainly don't think they should. They use their donations to line the pockets of their leaders or, especially in the case of their Church, Bill malls, make purchases of huge swabs of lands, and other various commercial Enterprises. I don't really see how it's very religious or nonprofit and nature to build a multi-billion-dollar mall. But you have to remember that there are a lot of good non-profit organizations that do deserve their tax-exempt status. And a lot of them do employ people that make pretty modest salaries. Again, when I lived in Utah, the place I stay that was a treatment center that was a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, and I knew for a fact that the therapist there, who were eminently qualified and all had at least master's degrees, made much less money than if they worked in private practice or as clinicians in other settings. It was pretty obvious no one was there to get rich. And a huge chunk of their funding came from the state of Utah, at least for several decades, until they became JACO approved and a lot of their funding came from private insurance and Medicaid and they were no longer beholden to the qualifications and requirements that the state of Utah required them to enforce in order to get that state money. Sorry if that was a tangent.
If the government needs more tax dollars, they can start by increasing the tax rate for people who make Millions per year, or changing the tax structure for capital gains, or closing the loopholes that make it so huge corporations end up paying less in taxes than they ethically should.
This fixed tax rate nonsense that Trump was going on about during the election was absolute horseshit. I can't remember exactly what it was, something like 12%, 24%, and 32%, something like that. I think I might have even been lower. If I made millions of dollars, or had some huge financial windfall, yeah, I might be irritated if I had to pay 40 or 50% of that money in tax, but that's the breaks.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/2017 08:05AM by midwestanon.