Churches Paying local taxes

[Mike Schutz]

Another thread led me to think about the unique tax situations faced by churches in each community.

Here in Pennsylvania, churches are required to pay local taxes on all property. Thus, we pay property taxes on the church property, which includes our church building, preschool, and two parsonages. This was not the case in Massachusetts.

What is the situation in your community?

[Barbara Moulton]

In Canada we pay taxes on the parsonage but not the church.

[Alisa Stoll]

We do not pay taxes on the land the church sits on. The other land that we have purchased we are required to pay taxes on as that land was not being used directly for religious purposes.

Alisa

[John Kennedy]

It won't take many more losers like Richard Roberts (ORU) to place a lot of the privileges churches have enjoyed taxwise, in real jeapordy.

[Doug Kitchen]

Another thread led me to think about the unique tax situations faced by churches in each community.

Here in Pennsylvania, churches are required to pay local taxes on all property. Thus, we pay property taxes on the church property, which includes our church building, preschool, and two parsonages. This was not the case in Massachusetts.

What is the situation in your community?

Mike,

In NY state, full tax exemption at every level of government is nearly automatic for churches.

We can use our Federal tax number for sales tax exemption (there is a special form). As long as the real estate is not used for a taxable purpose, we are not challenged on the tax free status.

We have found banks that will treat a parsonage as a personal residence even when the church is on the title (in order to maintain the tax free status). I believe we are not paying taxes on phone and electricity (at least at the state level) for the church but we are paying these taxes on the parsonage family phone/utilities.

There are some slight changes afoot. Cities are beginning to use separate bills for services like trash, water and sewer. In this case, we are treated as a small business. However, since the parsonage is on the same lot as the church building, we do not pay extra fees for the second building.

Doug

Doug