Opinion: Churches don't pay taxes. Should they?
From his office at St. James the Apostle, a 160-year-old Anglican church in downtown Montréal, Rev. Graham Singh is telling us about taxes. “Churches don’t like to talk about wealth. They almost pretend as though they’re poor.” In fact, as he points out, Christian churches in North America are the largest single landowning category of the charitable sector.
We spoke to Singh as part of our ongoing anthropological research into the complicated relationship between religion and public money in Canada. Since early 2023, we have been following Singh’s efforts to rebrand St. James as St. Jax, a church that houses not just worshippers but dozens of secular community groups and activities. Pivotal to his strategy: turn the building’s property tax exemption into rent subsidies for social organizations in a real estate market putting the squeeze on local non-profits.
Many Canadians don’t realize that religious properties are tax exempt. However, this privilege is increasingly being debated as organized religion recedes and many cities confront a looming affordability crisis.
A 2019 Senate committee inquiry into the charitable sector conserved the status quo, but for how long?
Critics argue that church tax exemptions represent millions in lost revenue, which municipalities could use to solve urgent social issues, such as affordable housing. In Montréal, an independent estimate put the amount of exempted taxes at $110 million a year.
Others view the numbers differently. University of Pennsylvania sociologist Ram Cnaan has measured the “halo effect” for decades. He calculates each church’s local economic impact, from the money it spends on flowers to the amount it saves taxpayers by providing counselling services.
Applying a........
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