Islamic Teaching On Usury Kills Property Tax Exemption In Tennessee
In Maryland, which has a Catholic pedigree if you go back far enough (There is a reason that they call it the Baltimore catechism) an apartment complex housing married couples serving as temple “ordinance workers” for the Church of Latter Day Saints was exempted as a “convent”. Similar status was sought and won by a pagan Phryganium in a pretty bitter struggle with assessors in Catskill, NY.
In the case of the Islamic Center of Nashville, we have an arrangement that was, in substance under general tax principles, a mortgage. If religious scruples did not prevent the calling of a spade a spade, ICN’s property tax exemption would not have been disturbed at all. Every other religion I can think of can take out a mortgage without disturbing is property tax exemption. It will be interesting if this is appealed and feeds into the debate about importing Sharia law into judicial decisions.
Kent Hovind’s Reliance On Tax Pro Letters Was Not Reasonable
As Kent Hovind, a leading light of Young Earth Creationism, nears the end of a long prison sentence for tax related crimes, he finds himself facing a new charge related...
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Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.