Religion: A $26.4 billion Business

The Senate is conducting an inquiry into the regulation and transparency of Australia’s not for profit sector, valued at some $80 billion a year. Churches make up about a third of this industry, which would imply that Australia’s declining number of Church attendees hand over $26 billion onto the collection plate each year.

But they don’t. The money comes from church businesses. In Australia there is no demarcation between the “charitable” activities of a Church, ie. preaching, and the other business activities of a church. Churches run all manner of businesses, and are able to unfairly compete with secular business because they can effectively operate without real oversight and without the burden of taxation.

Now there is a Senate enquiry afoot, and the religion industry is scared that the Government may cotton onto the biggest rort in Australian taxation history.

Max Wallace has an article about just this in today’s Crikey. Unfortunately they want you to pay money to read it. So here’s less than ten percent of it for your academic consideration:

There are about 1,500 religious organisations that are coded into the ABS’s data base. Their numbers seems to be increasing while at the same time Christian belief in Australia has declined steadily at every census.

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An organisation must have a building, be paying a stipend to a minister or similar, have a congregation, perform rituals and be open to the public. Secondly, all religions are legally charities. To “advance religion” is a tax-exempt charitable activity. Atheism is not tax-exempt because it does not entail a supernatural belief.

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A fluff ball defence of concessions to religion can be found in this interview from ABC Radio National’s Religion Report. A recent article from Wallace on a related Tax Office enquiry can be found here in the Australian. I’ve previously written a couple of articles regarding Max Wallace’s arguments and writings, you can find them here.

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