• ares35@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    the irs already knows that line is violated constantly. unfortunately, they don’t have the resources or the kahunas to go after the churches that do this. there’s way too many (like most of them, probably), and “going after churches” would be a political shitstorm regardless of the constitutional validity of such “persecution”

    • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The thing about the IRS is that they exist mostly outside of the consideration of political pandering. They just need to enforce tax code, not care about what people think. Kind of like a computer program. They don’t write the rules they just enforce whatever is on the books. They aren’t really elected or responsible for the perception of their acts. They are already generally unpopular publicly so I don’t see them being overly concerned about political shitstorms.

      • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Except a few years ago when they started going after fraud by conservative groups and Congress went after them for that. No government agency is as independent as they want you to believe. All it takes is one Congress member to decide to make a big deal about something and the program gets shutdown.

        If they start going after the Churches how are the senators from the Bible belt going to react? What do you think Biden is going to do? Take a hard stance against churches, does that sound like Joe “Bible the size of a small dog” Biden?

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      and “going after churches” would be a political shitstorm regardless of the constitutional validity of such “persecution”

      Say that again. No one likes the IRS. Imagine how little it would take to spin this. In this corner you have a soulless government agency that all of us have had to deal with on and in the other corner you have a church, the institution that generally is well liked, being “attacked” because the pastor expressed their first amendment rights. Sure it’s spin but it would definitely work. Big mean government vs tiny church.