{"id":1876,"date":"2006-08-25T21:29:13","date_gmt":"2006-08-26T01:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/?p=1876"},"modified":"2006-08-25T21:29:13","modified_gmt":"2006-08-26T01:29:13","slug":"the-taxman-goes-to-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2006\/08\/the-taxman-goes-to-church\/","title":{"rendered":"The Taxman Goes to Church"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.opinionjournal.com\/taste\/?id=110008841\">Wall Street Opinion Journal<\/a> August 25, 2006<\/p>\n<p>Why is the IRS in the business of reading sermons? <\/p>\n<p>When the Rev. George F. Regas delivered a sermon opposing the Iraq War in All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, Calif., two days before the 2004 presidential election, he expected to upset a few members of the congregation. Instead, he seems to have upset the Internal Revenue Service, which began an investigation that is still under way. All Saints isn&#8217;t the only church to fall out of the good graces of the IRS.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Under the 1954 Revenue Act, 501(c)(3) organizations risk losing their tax-exempt status if they &#8220;participate in, or intervene in . . . any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for political office.&#8221; Over the past two years scores of organizations have faced scrutiny for allegedly mixing their political convictions with their religious ones. And this summer the IRS expanded a program it first launched in 2004 to take direct aim at political advocacy inside houses of worship.<\/p>\n<p>The new crackdown, which the IRS calls the Political Activity Compliance Initiative, has so far put some 15,000 nonprofits&#8211;mostly churches&#8211;on notice that preaching politics puts them at risk of audits, fines or, in some cases, the loss of tax-exempt status. The IRS has also announced it will no longer wait for complaints to come in, but will instead take action &#8220;to prevent violations.&#8221; It will be reviewing the content of sermons, it says, as well as the financial books of religious organizations. The free exercise of religion could now come with a hefty bill.<\/p>\n<p>. . . <a href=\"http:\/\/www.opinionjournal.com\/taste\/?id=110008841\">more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wall Street Opinion Journal August 25, 2006 Why is the IRS in the business of reading sermons? When the Rev. George F. Regas delivered a sermon opposing the Iraq War in All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, Calif., two days before the 2004 presidential election, he expected to upset a few members of the congregation. &#8230; <a title=\"The Taxman Goes to Church\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2006\/08\/the-taxman-goes-to-church\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about The Taxman Goes to Church\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1319,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1319"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}