Conference: God Taxes Societies, 29.2./3.1.2024 in Paderborn

Tanja Skambraks, Martin Lutz (Ed.): Reassesssing the Moral Economy, 2023

Paying taxes is a field of economic activity that has always been highly morally charged: the question of who pays how much or can avoid or evade the prescribed payments is always closely related to debate about a fair societal distribution of burdens. In the process of moralisation, therefore, faith communities such as the Catholic Church also repeatedly seized the floor to propagate certain norms. The article examines the contributions of theologians from Spain, the USA and West Germany in the 1940s and 1950s. It concludes that the norms of taxation they propagated differed greatly depending on the institutional and economic frameworks within which they operated. The analysis proves taxation to be a field of economic action and societal dispute where economics and morality are indissolubly interconnected.

This paper reviews the bible, church history, papal statements and statements of other authoritative church bodies for explicit statements and guidance on taxation.

2009

2010

The United States has granted exemption from most federal taxes to a wide range of organizations going back to the beginning of the Republic. The earliest federal income tax statute, passed during the Civil War, applied only to individuals and exempted the trustees of charitable trusts. 1 This tax proved short-lived and expired in 1872. The ill-fated income tax of 1894, declared unconstitutional in 1895, 2 exempted all charities from tax. 3 The modern federal income tax, which traces its origins to the Corporate Excise Tax of 1909 4 and to the Revenue Act of 1913, 5 has from its inception granted statutory exemption from income tax to religious, charitable, and other organizations. Currently, the most important provision of the Internal Revenue Code in this area grants exemption to entities organized "for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes" as well as for "fostering national or international amateur sports competition" and "prevention of cruelty to children * Professor of Law, Seton Hall University School of Law. I wish to express my thanks to my research assistant Kelly Sinclair, J.D. 2010, for outstanding help. I would also like to thank the participants in the conference Religious Legal Theory: The State of the Field held at Seton Hall University School of Law in November 2009 for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. 1 The following year, in the face of the enormous financial pressure of the war, the tax was expanded to include an excise tax on corporations without any general exemption for charities. This was, however, an exceptional measure, prompted by the special exigencies of wartime.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

This paper focuses on the emergence of Islamic banking and finance in global financial markets and efforts by governments (through regulatory and tax initiatives) to facilitate it. Particularly, this paper focuses on the fundamental question as to whether it is constitutionally possible for Australia to implement such tax reforms to encourage and facilitate faith-based transactions.

HUMANUS DISCOURSE, 2022

Although the antecedents to modern-day taxation systems are embedded in the annals of western civilization, tax exemption for churches and charitable organizations, on the other hand, have a long history that dates back to the ancient Egyptian, Persian and Babylonian civilizations. Priests and Temples were forgiven their taxes and this tradition became institutionalized in western civilization in the age of Constantine the Great. His tax favours to the church were part of the binding mortar of church and state. Tax exemptions have since gained global appeal into the modern era. On the other hand, the call to tax churches in Nigeria as a consequence of accountability is also as old as the debate over the separation of church and state. The theology of this debate has a deep-rooted historical antecedents that need to be understood in the light of present realities. This paper examines both the theological and legal positions in the debate.

Social Analysis, 2020

This special issue decenters tax as an analytic device for understanding the relationship between state and citizen while examining the limits of social contract thinking. Focusing on how citizens interpret and react to state efforts to promote fiscal citizenship, it sheds light on contemporary fiscal structures and public debates about the moralities, practices, and imaginaries of tax systems. The contributors use tax to explore the nature of citizenship, personal freedom, and moral and economic value. They also highlight how taxation may be influenced by spaces of fiscal sovereignty that exist outside or alongside the state in the form of alternative religious and economic communities.

In a democracy characterized by the separation of church and state, what role does the federal government play in regulating the activities and the financial transactions of churches and other religious nonprofit organizations? What are the current federal requirements regarding tax exemption for churches, tax deductibility of donations to churches, and political activity by churches, and are these requirements justified? Rather than interfering with the free exercise of religion, does the federal government actually come closer to violating the establishment clause of the First Amendment by providing inappropriate tax benefits to churches and clergy? This paper discusses tax laws and federal court decisions relating to these and other issues.