John Oliver Set Up His Own “Church†to Make a Point about the Tax Code
You may have seen this John Oliver video floating around on social networks. His point was to show how easy it is to abuse nonprofit rules. When you take this into consideration, along with the current IRS trouble related to their targeting of selected groups, it makes me think it may be time to reevaluate the entire process. I wonder if the IRS actually audited more than the three (you read that right, THREE) tax exempt organizations over the last two years how many organizations with dubious reputations would shut down or have to pay some hefty tax bills.
Watch the Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption video
“Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight focused on how easy it is for groups in the United States to qualify as tax-exempt religious organizations. Several times, Oliver quoted from IRS regulations for tax-exempt religious organizations, and claimed that many of the guidelines are purposely vague and hard to enforce. To demonstrate his point, Oliver announced that he had founded his own church, Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption, showing how “disturbingly easy†it was to obtain tax-exempt status for a sham religious organization (the main mission of Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption is to collect donations).
While Oliver’s new “church†is sure to gain a great deal of attention, the tax-exempt status of religious organizations has long been an important topic in federal tax policy. Because of the difficulty of determining what counts as a religion, there have been dozens of court cases about which groups qualify as tax exempt religious organizations. Churches and other religious organizations have been unofficially tax-exempt in most of the United States since the American Revolution. The Internal Revenue Act of 1913, which established the modern income tax, also contained a specific exemption for religious organizations.
Oliver’s latest episode comes in the wake of a heated public debate about the tax-exempt status of churches and other religious organizations. In late June, journalist Mark Oppenheimer published an essay in Time Magazine arguing that the federal government should consider eliminating the tax-exempt status of churches, given the difficulty of determining what counts as a religion. The piece evoked a strong reaction across the internet, with writers such as Professor Denny Burk claiming that, without tax-exempt status, it would be difficult for many churches to survive.”