Vatican Properties Getting Taxed in Italy

It Italy, the Catholic Church will start paying taxes on non-church property. Again. Yes, they used to pay taxes but Silvio Berlusconi eliminated that in 2005 for the 110,000 properties which the Vatican owns throughout Italy. Yes, they own lots of churches, but they also own shopping malls, houses, and other buildings worth an estimated $12 billion and they haven't had to pay any taxes on them.

Well, Italy is having enough financial problems that that's going to end.

As Italy tightened its belt to deal with the financial crisis, more than 130,000 people signed an online petition calling for the Church's tax-exempt status to be revoked, it said.

'This is a victory for public pressure,'' Mario Staderini, the leader of the Italian Radicals party, told The Independent. ''We've managed to break down - a little bit - the wall protecting the Church.''

The Corriere della Sera newspaper said tax authorities would calculate how much of a property was used purely for religious purposes and tax it proportionately.

Under this system, a church would remain tax-exempt, but a chapel that operated a hostel would pay tax, the BBC reported.

Source: SMH

I think this is a great development. There's no good reason why a shopping mall, hotel, house, or anything else that isn't a church should be exempt from taxes merely because it happens to be owned by a church.

Even exempting churches themselves is dubious because it's predicated on the assumption that the church is serving the public good in ways that relieves pressure on government services (i.e., charity like soup kitchens). In reality, though, churches spend a lot more on just promoting their own beliefs.

They should still eligible for non-profit tax exempt status like any secular non-profit. I wouldn't exclude them merely because they are religious. However, obtaining that status is harder for secular groups (at least in America). Churches get their status almost automatically; secular groups have to work for it and have to regularly prove that they deserve it. What I'd like to see is a fair, level playing field.