185 Comments

Religious organizations - ALL OF THEM - need to pay taxes.

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Religious organizations - ALL OF THEM - need to pay taxes.

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Ta, Jamie Lynn. We've missed you around here.

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I would say "Great! Now do the criminal organisation known as the "church" of $cientology!"

Except, I don't have to. The courts in the US have stayed on the side of viewing the Co$ as a business. It's the IRS which granted a tax exemption for no published reason. (Oh, and the courts decided that the Sklar case to sue the IRS for viewing the Co$ as tax exempt and other religious groups as not should eb dismissed for lack of standing.)

So, do the IRS next!

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Yeah they know the fucking law.

And they know the Supreme Court does not fucking care.

UGH.

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If it moves, it’s Personal Property Tax. If not, it’s Real Estate Tax.

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Religions are absurd. Tax laws are absurd. People are absurd. the U.S. is absurd.

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So the poor schlub who sweeps the church gets fucked if he gets laid off? How very Christian!

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Well, Biblical Jesus really didn't give too shits about the poor. He made it perfectly clear that anyone who didn't believe in him was going to hell regardless of their socio-economic status. (Show me in the Bible where he says "Blessed are the poor Pagan." )

The historical Jesus, assuming there existed one at all, was probably too busy foaming at the mouth and screaming at "demons" to give a poverty answer. So nice to know that one of our major mass-delusions are founding by the Early Roman Era's equivalent of Charles Manson.

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Today, he’d have been a QAnon follower.

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Hi JLC, long time no see, but us oldsters figured out who you are. Thank you. Also I think all the Catholic justices of the US Supreme Court should recuse themselves from this case when it eventually gets there. What' that you say, there'd only be two left?

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Organized religion is a business. They're selling something.

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Indulgences, by any other name.

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Bullshit, mainly.

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Perhaps, to some; others not so much.

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I don’t understand why religious organizations are exempt from paying into unemployment insurance.

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Exactly. Why should it matter if they are a religion?

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Yeah change the law. A court determining what is our is not religious in nature is destined for trouble.

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Allegories be flexible like that

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It seems to me that if you must let an employee (someone paid for labor) go then helping them pay their bills with unemployment insurance is the 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒃𝒍𝒆 thing to do.

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It is weird to rely on Justice Scalia for an intelligence analysis of the First Amendment. But as he wrote, and as has been the Supreme Court's position until it was packed with appointees of the proven Rapist Defendant Trump, if a law is applicable to all, you don't get to avoid it by claiming your religion tells you to.

You don't get to be a sovereign citizen and ignore the law just because God told you to drive 90MPH through a school zone.

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BUT THEY'RE ONLY TRAVELING, OFFICER!!! 😂

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