Don’t Give Churches a Free Tax Ride

I’m 72 and retired. I’m very thankful that Medicare pays my medical bills that otherwise I could not afford. Income from a property I own and Social Security brings in enough for my wife and I to pay our living expenses.

I do not have sufficient income to replace my 10-year-old car. I can barely afford my dental bills to save what teeth I have.

When I was a productive earner, paying my property taxes on the house I have owned for 25 years was not a burden. Now that my earnings are a fraction of what they used to be, it is a hardship.

But even though I am barely able to afford my property tax, I’m forced to pay the property tax for others. People who derive benefits from their religious institutions should be the ones who support their churches. They would be paying out of choice. I do not have that choice; I’m forced to pay my money to subsidize religious institutions that I do not subscribe to, nor do I benefit from, nor do I have use for. I’m being forced to sacrifice what little security I have in my old age for others. Telling me I have to sacrifice myself for others is immoral.

Why am I forced to pay property tax for religious institutions whose annual incomes are measured in the hundreds of millions and who possess assets worth billions while I struggle to survive?

If religious institutions paid their own property tax, we would have billions of dollars in surplus, and the state wouldn’t need to put people like me at risk.