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It’s time for the churches to start paying tax
By Brian Morris
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull swept many budget options off the table — both revenue and expenditure — but glaring opportunities for bold new revenue measures were never considered. Religion is a multi-billion dollar entrepreneurial colossus that pays virtually no tax, and the extent of this tax-free bonanza helps create a budgetary black hole. A new national poll in April shows 64 per cent of Australians think religions should now be taxed. People are fully aware of the wealth owned by big churches — not the hard-pressed charities — but the large religious institutions and the corporate enterprises they run. While two-thirds of the nation support the notion of taxing religious businesses, only seven per cent think they should remain tax-exempt, while 13 per cent say they simply don’t know. Much has contributed to the public’s view that the big churches now operate well beyond the traditional parish precinct. There’s disquiet over revelations from the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse, the Vatican Bank scandals and the rank politicisation of religion across a raft of contemporary social issues. Community concern also extends to churches that operate essentially as entertainment businesses. These include many of the charismatic evangelical churches like Paradise, the Church of Scientology and Hillsong — the latter described in some news reports last year as a “money-making machine”. Religions are not required to lodge any financial records. There is no transparency. Where does the multi-billion dollar revenue of religious organisations come from — the business profits from huge state and federal grants — and where exactly does the money go? Church operations are tax-free — based on the escape clause of “advancing religion” — a statute dating back from Queen Elizabeth the First, and inherited from England when Australia was colonised. There are now four Heads of Charity under which religions operate, through the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profit Commission, but they are all tax-exempt. ACNC registers more than 60,000 charities, of which only 40 per cent are religious. The majority are secular charities that do equally good work. With high profile scandals and frequent media coverage from alarmist church hierarchies on issues such as same-sex marriage — abetted by a variety of Christian lobbies — the community sees a more politicised religion dominating the public square. Perhaps a critical mass is developing. It has become self-evident that churches are now highly prominent with their privates schools, which are now attended by almost 40 per cent of Aussie kids. They are corporate enterprises, together with their private hospitals, aged care facilities, and a raft of commercial businesses from wineries to insurance companies and to turf-laying firms. Sanitarium is the best known religious corporation — wholly owned by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, with a 2010 turnover of $550 million and a staff of more than 1500. All tax-exempt. None of these profitable religious companies pay more than a modicum of tax — if at all. Tax-free enterprises don’t enjoy every available concession but they all benefit in some way. Church exemptions include: income tax, GST, FBT, payroll tax, council rates, state government taxes, land tax, and local government taxes. In addition religions have exemptions from anti-discriminations laws and other statutes. What is most remarkable is the sheer magnitude of taxation that escapes the Federal Government coffers. In 2004, the Rationalist Society of Australia commissioned the Victoria University Graduate School of Business to investigate religious tax privileges. It found the Catholic Church in Australia (alone) owned an estimated $100 billion in property and assess, and based on conservative figures, it escaped annual taxes of around $2.6 billion — and that was 12 years ago. In 2008, the Secular Party of Australia made a submission to the federal government’s Review of Australia’s Future Tax System, in October of that year. They found that more than $20 billion in taxes remained uncollected from the nation’s religious organisations by state and federal governments. Even the Parliamentary Budget Office, prior to this budget, found savings of $500 million annually — simply by scrapping fringe benefits tax for religious employees, and dumping the Chaplaincy Program. But it’s no surprise that Treasurer Scott Morrison would even consider taxing entrepreneurial religion. As an evangelical Christian himself, Morrison worships at a Hillsong-style Pentecostal church in Sydney. Indeed, LNP parliamentarians are heavily Christianised — at a rate far greater than the general public, which is now majority religion-neutral. And only eight per cent attend church on a regular basis. The budget is in deficit, with massive shortfalls in revenue that means less money for public schools, hospitals and the sort of national infrastructure that’s urgently needed to help grow the economy. This argument is not focused on bona fide church charities but exclusively on corporate religion. What is necessary now is for all religious organisation to submit annual financial reports and for the government and Australian Charities and Not-for-Profit Commission to review their tax-exempt status. Financial transparency is essential and it’s well past time for religions to pay tax on their profits. And with 64 per cent of the public backing religious taxation, governments need to show fortitude and resist the inevitable Christian backlash from the small but highly vocal church hierarchies. It’s also time for new and in-depth research into the degree to which religious corporations are creating this massive shortfall in government revenue, through their avoidance of various taxes. If religions wish to become highly politicised — under the guise of “religious freedom” — then it’s high time they became financially transparent, factually honest and started to pay their fair share of tax.
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