> Why should I as a taxpayer "support" religious institutions thru their tax
> exemptions. Religious institutions ultimately are nothing but businesses. . . . .
> So, as long as I have to support religious institutions. . . . .


So lets in turn take THAT a step further:

Apparently, the way you see it - If I donate my hard earned money to some church, and they don't have to pay taxes on that gift, then YOU have supported that church !

So then if I instead donated that hard earned cash to some railway museum, was it really YOU that supported that museum?

What if I had given nothing - Does that then mean you supported nothing. WOW! Should one as civic minded as you want to appear, then be ashamed for not supporting anything at all.

WOW!?!!!! - Is rational thought really escaping you? Or are you merely afflicted by this epidemic mal-odious psuedo-liberal notion that all wealth, including my hard earned salary, actually already belongs to the tax-collector, while you (the gov't) are actually supporting me if I am allowed to keep any of it.

REALITY is, that wealth rightfully belongs to whomever created it in the first place. It does not belong to the king, nor the dictator, nor the fuhrer, nor any common thief, nor even a stock holder; and certainly not to a democratic government - Until it is earned - period! It truthfully is you and I (the taxpayers) that are supporting the government, not the other way around.


But much more important: Have you not heard of the Constitutional injunction: "Congress [_{nor anyone else}] shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . ."?

Taking even a small portion of a donation, for a use other than for what it was donated; abridges that free exercise of religion, and any other charitable (ie. religious) exercise for that matter. The courts have so ruled for nearly 230 years!

That is why donations to churches and any number of other charitable causes cannot be taxed. The only time churches can even appear to be taxed (and they most certainly are), is if they happen to own a corporate business; but then it is the corporate profits of that business that are being taxed in that case - not the donations.

I would not have it any other way - in America.

Would you?