Atheists Challenge Tax Exemption for Religious Groups
Atheists Challenge Tax Exemption for Religious Groups
By not taxing religious institutions, federal and state governments could be foregoing tens of billions of dollars a year, according to a study by a sociologist at the University of Tampa, the Religion News Service reports.
In an article published in the Council for Secular Humanism's Free Inquiry magazine, Ryan Cragun, an assistant professor of sociology, and two students estimated that the total annual cost of tax exemptions for religious institutions could be as high as $71 billion. While theirs is neither a comprehensive nor unbiased appraisal, the findings have raised eyebrows among non-theists, who have long sought to eliminate tax exemptions for religious groups on the grounds that they unfairly subsidize religion. Historically, however, challenges by non-theists to tax exemptions for religious groups have gone nowhere.
Cragun told RNS that the article is not a call to revoke the tax-exempt status of religious organizations completely. Instead, he suggests that tax exemptions be limited to nonprofits, religious or secular, whose services the government would otherwise have to provide.
"It is something lots of people have been against, but not very much has been done about it," said Free Inquiry editor Tom Flynn. "Coming up with hard numbers has been so difficult. But if there are going to be good discussions about this, we need good data."
| 
