religious bodies and taxes

Godless should tackle sport rort before religion | The Australian

THE Olympics are on again and we are having the usual discussion about the value we are getting for taxpayers' dollars spent on elite sports.

There are many things that shape our heritage and the sporting tradition is one ofthem, the idea being that it isn't all aboutgold medals won but also brave attempts by the like of track cyclist AnnaMeares.

Yeah, sure. Not to disparage Meares and her comeback from injury, but some of us who love the Olympics just as much as anyone else are pretty cynical about some pampered athletes becoming rich professionals at taxpayers' expense, then giving almost nothing back. It looks suspiciously like a form of public funding for sports business.

So it bothers me that as some are calling for even more taxpayer funding for elite sport to prop up our sporting culture and the failing national psyche, an argument is being mounted in opinion columns that taxpayers should not support the charitable work of religious bodies through tax exemptions, although it is religious bodies that administer the overwhelming amount of direct welfare support in this country. Apparently our culture demands we support the religion of sport but not the work that has a vital place, not just in our collective national psyche and culture but in the practical realm of life.

The argument is a compelling one and it goes something like this. Religious bodies and charities are not taxed, so religion can run businesses and not-for-profit organisations in the guise of charity. These charities, run as businesses and employing thousands, make and are given huge amounts of money that are churned back into the organisation. How is that different from any other business? Well, precisely because it isn't like another business. The turnover is not the object. Personal gain is not the object. The object is community good. That should be justification enough for not taxing such organisations.

True, religious bodies and their affiliated not-for-profit organisations employ large numbers of people. The Catholic Church, for example, employs about 100,000 people. But it is indicative of the nature of this argument that most of those people are teachers, and nurses and other medical staff. In fact once the church employed very few personnel because the work was done by unpaid religious. But times have changed and the operations of the church have become, of necessity, business-like.

They also have become part of the mainstream fabric of society in a way they were not 100 years ago.

So, for example, some of the best hospitals in this country are run by religious institutions and most of them are public hospitals, such as St Vincent's in Sydney. And of course one-third of Australian children, Catholic and non-Catholic, are educated in Catholic diocesan schools, which are part of the mainstream education system. Although they receive government funding, they save the taxpayer an enormous amount since they are funded at less than half of what it costs to educate a child in a state school. Non-diocesan schools receive even less.

Large religiously based charities such as the St Vincent de Paul Society, Mission Australia and the Salvation Army run everything from homeless shelters to youth outreach and aged-care facilities, and lately the Government even expects them to find jobs for the unemployed. These charities are financed by a mixture of donations, government support and their own businesses, such as the famous op shops. Would Australians seriously want the op shops taxed?

Because if we apply the principle of business taxation uniformly, that is exactly what would happen. Everything from the proceeds of the local preschool's lamington drive to the funds raised by World Vision, which has strong connections to the American Baptist Church, would also be taxed.

But what about companies that earn money and seem to have little to do with religious charitable endeavours? We are not just talking about nuns who make cosmetics or monasteries that make wine.

The Sanitarium Company, which makes Weet-Bix is operated by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. It earns millions. Surely it should pay tax? This is a slightly grey area. However, even if Sanitarium were officially taxed, in effect the company would not end up paying any tax because all profits go back into the church and it partly funds things such as the Sydney Adventist Hospital, the San.

So, by all means, let's have a charities commission that weeds out bogus charities, such as those set up by rich athletes to further enrich themselves. Let's make sure that the money does go where it is supposed to, since this is really the point. But please don't let secularist ex-senators Lyn Allison and Andrew Murray try to pretend that charity can be assessed like any other business.

For years the argument that religious bodies should pay tax on businesses has been used to disguise the real agenda, and the real agenda is to make religion pay tax.

This was the thrust of an opinion article published recently by Max Wallace, director of the Australian National Secular Association and author of The Purple Economy: Supernatural Charities, Tax and the State. His argument completely ignored that religion does not make money for itself. It does not provide dividends toshareholders; it provides services forothers.

So if we tax religion, we must tax the Secular Association, too, and the Humanist Society and all the rest of the anti-religionists. Of course the anti-religionists don't make much money, but then they don't have to. They are not running hospitals, schools, orphanages, old people's homes. They don't generally organise themselves to go around at night in a van picking up drunks and taking them to Matt Talbot. They'd rather tax the proceeds of the silver circle at the Talbot.

The culture of a country has many facets. Sport, with its creed of a fair go, is one of ours; volunteerism is another. But it is odd that the secularist society so keen to make sure that we don't fund religion is not worried at all about the waste of money of that other religion and cultural icon, sport.