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Most Recent Posts

About That Kenneth Copeland Mansion You Saw On John Oliver

About That Kenneth Copeland Mansion You Saw On John Oliver

Something that would be a small blow against the greediest of the televangelist that would not be harmful to more modest clergy would be a dollar limit on the cash housing allowance under Section 107(2) . FFRF’s attack on the housing allowance had a marvelous effect on the ecumenical movement. One of the amicus briefs defending the housing allowance had Southern Baptists joining with the Russian Orthodox, the Krishna Consciousness people and the Islamic Center of Boca Raton. I’m hoping that a proposal for a dollar cap might not be as disturbing to denominations that don’t have so many mega pastors.

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Sending IRS Against Phony Churches Is Bringing A Knife To A Gun Fight

Sending IRS Against Phony Churches Is Bringing A Knife To A Gun Fight

Also, the IRS can’t really be in a position to assert that religious beliefs are bogus. Set aside the fringe and look at mainstream Christianity. The claim is that God sent his son to Earth and let him be sacrificed to save mankind. Moreover, one should tithe or otherwise donate to churches to support the institutions, spread the word, and also help the less fortunate. Other than helping the downtrodden, it sounds absolutely nuts to a non-believer, much like Greek mythology sounds to us today. The IRS has to tread very lightly when dealing with faith and claims that religious leaders are ripping off their flock. As a constitutional matter, we really don’t want the government intruding in religion and telling people what to believe or that their beliefs are bogus.

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John Oliver Should Not Blame IRS For Televangelist Tax Abuse

Like many John Oliver skits, this spoof, while amusing, raises serious issues. To identify three of these: First, the IRS does not write the Internal Revenue Code. Congress does and the American people elect Congress. To minimize church-state entanglement, Congress has constrained the IRS’s ability to audit churches. Mr. Oliver criticizes this low audit rate without explaining who is responsible for it, namely, Congress.

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Paul Hansen Receives Below Guideline Sentence – End Of L’affaire Kent Hovind?

Paul Hansen Receives Below Guideline Sentence – End Of L’affaire Kent Hovind?

Hansen believes that after all the dust settles he and Kent Hovind will be able to bring the IRS agents, prosecutors and federal judge before a court and get a judgment for damages.  The terms he has variously used are “common law court”, “community court” and “court of record”.

In an interview with Rudy Davis, Hansen indicated that convening a common law court requires only twelve godly men who then get to decide both the facts and the law.  Combining Hovind and Hansen’s views on a proper judicial system, I can’t help but think that they would be pleased with something that looks a lot like Sharia law, only Christian flavored with the King James version of the Bible being used rather than the Koran.

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Does Ninth Circuit Mortgage Interest Decision Create Special Rights?

Does Ninth Circuit Mortgage Interest Decision Create Special Rights?

We thus agree that the debt limit provisions of § 163(h)(3) result in a marriage penalty; but we are not particularly troubled. Congress may very well have good reasons for allowing that result, and, in any event, Congress clearly singled out married couples for specific treatment when it explicitly provided lower debt limits for married couples yet, for whatever reason, did not similarly provide lower debt limits for unmarried co-owners.

The IRS argues that applying § 163(h)(3)’s debt limit provisions on a per-taxpayer basis creates a marriage penalty. We agree that it does, but we do not believe the marriage penalty is as significant a concern as the IRS urges.

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Travel Blogger Finds Sex, Drugs Even Some Museums But No Tax Deductions

Travel Blogger Finds Sex, Drugs Even Some Museums But No Tax Deductions

Probably the thing that hurt him the most was not doing any sort of planning or inquiry before burning through nearly $40,000.  On the other hand you might argue that blogging was a much younger field in 2007 when he conceived of the idea.  I read Blogging For Dummies in 2010 and the main emphasis was to deliver good content.

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Let Irwin Schiff Die With His Family Not In Prison

Let Irwin Schiff Die With His Family Not In Prison

Be sure to check out JJ MacNab’s critical comments on this piece.  She points out that there is quite a bit of nonsense in the Alex Jones interview.  JJ has focused a lot of attention on what is called the “sovereign citizen” movement, a pretty disturbing phenomenon.  Although the Schiffs, father and son, are not advocates of violence the flood of frivolous filings unleashed by Irwin’s notions sometimes threatens to swamp the system.  Just as a country goes to war with the army it has, it funds its legitimate operations with the tax system that it has. The main reason Irwin’s ideas are persuasive is because they support a notion that many people would like to be true. They really don’t stand up to serious scrutiny and I don’t think most of the believers apply any scrutiny to them.  Peter Schiff seems to be a smart guy and an independent thinker, but, you know, it’s his dad, so I’m inclined to give him a pass.

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Church Attendance Held Against Under Armour Exec In Tax Domicile Case

Church Attendance Held Against Under Armour Exec In Tax Domicile Case

They are holding it against him that when he happened to be in Maryland, he went to church – the same church he had gone to while he was living in Baltimore full time.  Thankfully it does not indicate Mr. McDermoond’s religion, but let’s just hypothesize that he is Catholic.  Back in parochial school, they told us we had to go to Mass every Sunday, no matter where in the world we were.  It takes a lot to change your domicile, but changing your religion is not a requirement, so Mr. McDermond’s church attendance should not have been held against him.

I hypothesized Catholic, because I would think that in Maryland, that thought might have crossed somebody’s mind.  Maryland was the only colony founded for Catholics originally.  The only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence was from Maryland.  The catechism we had in parochial school was the Baltimore Catechism.  All that and these judges don’t get that somebody might go to church, wherever he happened to be.

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Bristol Palin At Heart Of IRS Scandal – Who Knew?

So what we have is a reflexive anit-conservative appointed to head the IRS Exempt Group during the Bush administration by an IRS Commissioner appointed by Bush.  Is it possible that the big money Republicans figured that they had the IRS exempt group outgunned, but that a reflexive anti-conservative in that position would be tough on the more conservative part of the party? The other thing that the report mentions is that during the whole period of the scandal no audits of exempts were initiated over the political spending issue.  So the established dark money organizations were let off scot-free.  All the grief went to the Tea Party insurgents who were least able to cope with it.

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