Challenges arise to church-state separation and tax exemptions
The clergy housing allowance, school choice, and the Johnson Amendment are all under scrutiny.
Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, copresidents of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Some rights reserved by S Pakhrin.
(The Christian Science Monitor) When Dan Barker was a Pentecostal minister, he excluded his clergy housing allowance from his income tax returns.
Back then, he didn’t give much thought to this IRS benefit, which today gives religious leaders a tax break worth $800 million a year. Now, as copresident of the Freedom from Religion Foundation along with his wife, Annie Laurie Gaylor, his efforts are behind the ruling of a federal judge who declared this benefit a violation of the separation of church and state. The case is headed to an appeals court.
A growing number of people have questioned the reasoning behind various kinds of tax benefits religious groups have long received.
