Belly, anyone who does not live by good social order deserves scrutiny, condemnation and isolation. Those building a religious jihad training camp on the Colo River certainly need their actions curbing; as their intent is against National Security, and good society.

Well it seems the consensus among those who just want to punish religion is that the churches need to be taxed so as to hurt them and their cause.

That taxing donations would reduce tax revenue (since the donation itself would become a tax deduction to the donor) is ignored. That other organisations would be caught up in the jihad is ignored. (besides legislation could be designed to discriminate in favour of these'good' organisations since discrimination is fine so long as it favours the 'right' people). That the new tax would earn 3/5ths of bugger all is ignored - all church expenses would become deductible so their 'profit' would be minor.

But those of a certain ilk would get the warm-inner glow of having beaten the enemy and that's all that matters.

Rache,

Previously you made all sorts of claims about these funds, all which you now seemed to have abandoned following my giving you links to the actual ATO summary. It'd be nice if you acknowledged that, but alas.

" This is why they [the ATO] consider the funds to be a vehicle for tax minimisation."

The ATO's job is to maximise tax collections. That they think the funds are used to reduce tax doesn't mean that the funds aren't nonetheless doing what they were designed to do.

" commonly disburse such things as Directors Fees to individuals "
I'm not sure how much you don't understand about all this, but paying directors fees is the opposite of tax minimisation. The Directors Fees are taxable in the hands of the recipient and usually at a higher rate than that which applied to the fund.

I can not see why some think my view is about punishing faiths, the thought honestly plays no roll in my wish as told here, yes I could name many faiths I dislike, we all surely can, but why do we not tax the BILLIONS of dollars faiths turn over every year? is it fair that they not pay?just maybe the head of WASP faith needs to throw more money men out of his place of worship.

To Belly.

I understand your want for rich faiths, (or any rich orginizations) to be taxed, or at least give back. But I don't know how to tax the rich more without the burden being dealt more so to the not so rich or the poor.

For the faith groups that house millions or more, I don't think taxes are enough. Maybe something along the lines that is an organization makes X amount of money or more then it should annually inform it's members and the public how it spends the money. That might be enough for tv evanguals saying how much they need contributions to actually use that money for charitable causes instead of holding it for themselves.

That might cause some issues too if there are unexpected expenses but are under the scrunity of the public so there's no funding to help fix those issues. But in theory if the orginization makes enough money to be wealthy, maybe the scrunity is something worth it.

The thing with taxes is that most taxes are about income tax or sales tax. But if there already is taxes taken out for church staff, then that's all I think that can be accounted for through taxes.

That all said, you and I have different views concerning taxes as a whole. In my opinion the government should have tax funded programs and tax funded resources., but it doesn't need more taxes then that to get wasted in spending only to say they need more next time. Something is wrong with the tax system and the answer in my opinion isn't to have more taxes.

Not-now.soon income tax is my target not GST but include that if what we are getting is fair tax on all faiths,why not? if this thread demanded we tax the exclusive brethren, or Islam, maybe the Tammy whatever one, that one saw massive fraud send its head to prison, a host of others,it would be supported by most, I just can not understand in a world that has a third not believing n any faith why we must prop up a faith.now maybe I am wrong, not certain, but do faiths pay GST? if not why not? cults, they exist,some pay no tax why