New topic to go along with Bruce's "Kudos to William..." in this forum:
My view on the clergy housing allowance is that it is a welcome tax break for ministers but one that is viewed by the public only when abuses are publicized. These abuses contribute to the pressure to revise or eliminate it. I would much rather revise it than eliminate it.
is my article up today. There are a number of links that feature some of the things written and said about it, along with examples of egregious abuse.
The abuses come because (a) the amount of the tax break is unlimited. If a minister lives in a $3 million home he can cut hundreds of thousands of dollars from his adjusted gross income and not have to pay income taxes for that amount, a savings of tens, possibly hundreds of thousands in income tax payments. Ordinary citizens are indirectly subsidizing the minister's mansion. (b) In some situations questionable individuals employed by churches or church institutions have been ordained as ministers to claim the HA. This is a more prickly area for government to enter, since we don't want some bureaucrat empowered to determine who is a legitimate minister and who is not.
No one said the gummit had to make sense with tax policy but a more sensible approach to giving ministers a tax break would probably be better for us in the long haul.
I take Bruce's point about the change in attitude from us on the state's involvement with affairs of the church. We tend to like the involvement so long as it favors and rewards us.
Having blogged a bit on this subject, it looks to me as if Southern Baptists take the approach of tiptoeing around any substantive discussions of the matter in hopes that no one will notice and things will just go on as they have for about a century...and we can just continue to take the tax break.