Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Finally...some common sense.


Madison atheists sue to end IRS break to ministers
By Bruce Vielmetti of the Journal Sentinel
Sept. 16, 2011


While politicians talk of closing income tax loopholes, deductions and credits for special interests, a Madison group has taken action to undo one preference it says is flat out unconstitutional -- housing allowances for ministers. The Freedom From Religion Foundation and three of its officers have sued Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman. The lawsuit, filed this week in Madison federal court, seeks a declaration that the exemption violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

"Section 107 was adopted in 1954, as a reaction to the Cold War antipathy to atheism, and it was intended to subsidize, promote, endorse, favor, and advance churches, religious organizations, and 'ministers of the gospel;' by contrast, §107 also discriminates against the individual plaintiffs who cannot receive the same tax benefits because they are not practicing religious clergy."

As officers of the foundation, the plaintiffs say, they get housing allowances but they're taxed as income. The ministers' allowance isn't just for rent or mortgage payments. Payment for everything from closing costs to home furnishings to utilities and lawn maintenance qualifies for exemption. To apply the section, the IRS must "make sensitive, fact intensive, intrusive, and subjective determinations dependent on religious criteria and inquiries," according to the suit, such as what constitutes worship, ordination, or qualifying affiliation with a church. The end result, the foundation contends, amounts to prohibited "excessive entanglement" between church and state.

And some of the determinations might smell fishy in the end. Even basketball coaches, if they're ordained ministers, get the tax break if they coach at a schools "integrally" related to a church, the suit contends. In all, hundreds of millions of dollars in ministers' compensation goes untaxed, according to the suit.

http://www.jsonline.mobi/blogs/news/129949298.html