The United States' Gross Domestic Product---our “economy”--- was estimated to be $16.62 trillion in 2012.
That’s $16,620 billion dollars.
policymic.com(shout out Elena!)
It remains the largest single national economy in the world and has been so since about 1890, four years after our ClockTower.
It yields enormous tax revenue.
www.census.gov
But religion doesn’t pay its fair share.
- Donations to religious groups are tax-deductible.
- Churches don’t pay property taxes on their land or buildings.
- Churches don’t pay sales taxes.
- Churches don’t pay capital gains tax, either.
- Churches also don’t pay corporate income taxes.
Plus, priests, ministers and rabbis have special privileges to deduct their rent and other living expenses. Wouldn’t you just love to earn your rent tax-free?
flickr.com
And get this, they evade these taxes while spending almost $400 million dollars every year (!) bribing congress on contraception and abortion and a whole host of other issues. This is unethical and it’s wrong.
This amounts to a yearly religious subsidy of about $83 billion dollars in unpaid taxes.
So why do we allow it?
Because it amounts to almost nothing.
Because the entirety of this forced religious subsidy paid by the rest of us is still less than one half of one percent of the USA economy.
Still.
runluaurun.com
Doesn’t make it right.
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