Guest opinion: Pay to Caesar what is Caesar’s

Montanan’s need property tax relief, and more often than not, there doesn’t seem to be any long-lived answers from those tasked with governing us.

As many things in life, complete reform occasionally needs to occur. The slow encroachment of bad habits might lead us to a place where suddenly we find ourselves asking in perplexity, “How did I get to this point?” The idea that follows affects a large portion of the population. Solutions to these problems have the power to affect our whole government and culture in a positive way. 

A little history research reveals that in 1894 the Wilson-Gorman Act reckoned that charitable organizations ought to be exempt from taxation. I wish I could say that I was alive at this time and could have spoken up in a small measure of protest or warning, but unfortunately I was not. I am alive today, and today is where we find ourselves asking, “How did we get to this point?” 

Before anyone uproars and says that I’m saying we ought to tax the charities, I am not.  What I am saying is this. What started as “don’t tax those who are trying to help the less fortunate”, ended with, “don’t tax that church who wants to buy a $100,000 TV for their stage.” This is gross. 

Regretfully, I once was a part of a church in Billings whose tax records show a market valuation of approximately $13 million for the property owned by the institution. Property tax for this property is a shade under $16,000. 

For the average citizen like me, this sounds pretty reasonable, but then I meandered up the street a block and found a similarly valued commercial property. This property did not find itself fortunate enough to be classified as a 501c3 organization and thus was liable for its full taxable amount. Valued at $15 million the property tax bill came in at a bit over $230,000. This is a scary difference.  

If my reasoning, trouble-shooting mind spreads this difference across the width of the entire state, the tax revenue loss is staggering, almost incalculable. Of course it would be very easy to say, “But this is a charitable organization, it is meant to do good.” Yet from the perspective of someone who has sat in church budget meetings, sat on boards, been a church member, the good that is being done, is not nearly enough to justify a tax exempt status. 

As a Christian myself, and I have found there is a glaring problem of hypocrisy in our actions. Jesus said to pay to Caesar what is Caesar’s, not to try to evade it. There may have been a time where churches did more charity than they do today, but the slice of the church budget that goes to feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, funding foster care, or any of the myriad of other things that the Bible says should be our priority, is negligible. If we reason out how these things affect the common citizen, the conclusion is staggering.  

Let’s take the example given in Billings, and I know there was a 15% valuation difference between the two properties, but the tax bill difference is about $214,000. In one year, and one instance, nearly $200,000 was taken out of the budget of food stamps, prisoner reform programs, foster care and any number of things that the government does, that the church is supposed to be doing, and instead was spent on who knows what? I can’t even begin to calculate or scale this across the nation accurately. When I try, I come up with numbers that break my calculator.  

The simple truth is this. Jesus gave the responsibility for caring for the needs of the less fortunate on His church. At some point in the last 100 years, the people who say they follow Jesus, disobeyed and put this responsibility on the back of the government. In addition, they added insult to injury, and skirt the taxes that would go to pay for these things.

This has to change, and it actually doesn’t even have to wait for legislation. It is even simpler than enacting new laws that revoke 501c3 tax status on the churches. All churches have to do is cut the check that Jesus told them to. Pay what you owe.  

If you have to have a grand temple that you sing songs in, then pay for it with taxed income. If you want a big screen TV on the stage, then pay for it the way the rest of us buy our capital improvements, but don’t put these things, that God did not ask for, on the backs of the taxpayer. If churches were to actually prioritize doing what Jesus told them to do, we might be surprised what might be accomplished.  

What is our course of action, and what can be done? I can imagine the political suicide that would be realized if someone were to propose legislation for tax reform in this area.  Much of what might be needed is to simply say out loud the statement of responsibility.  

If I go backwards in time, calculating very rough figures, I do not have a hard time coming up with figures that equal or surpass the national debt. What I mean by this, is that by the church shirking its responsibilities for what Jesus would call the “least of these,” we have added a tax burden on others.  

It seems to me that the ones who shout loudest about solving the national debt are the ones most responsible for it, and furthermore they would be the ones least interested in changing this aspect of the problem. Tax reform is needed for those “charitable organizations” that spend 97% of their budgets on salaries and bigger and better auditoriums.  

If the gospel message were really that important to places like this, then actions would speak much louder than words.  Pour out the whole tithe on things God actually asks for, and pay to Caesar what is Caesar’s.

Caleb Olfert lives in Bearcreek.