phosadaud
Posts: 11127
Joined: 9/19/2005
From: Washington State
Status: online
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It depends on the state. In Washington state, we don't pay property taxes on the 5 acres our church building is actually sitting on, but the rest of our property we do. We also still have to pay sales taxes whereas in some states, non-profits don't have to. As far as giving unto Ceasar what it Ceasars - if Ceasar says we don't owe taxes, we don't owe Ceasar that money. The only time we wouldn't be giving Ceasar what is Ceasars would be if we didn't pay taxes Ceasar said we owed.
I also wanted to clear up something about federal taxes: Churches would pay taxes on net income so it really doesn't matter whether you are non-profit or not. Non-profit doesn't mean you don't or can't have a net income. 
As far as other taxes - I think a lot of this depends on the size of your church and what you are doing. For some churches these taxes may not be much, but for other churches, this can be a very large sum of money and I would find it wasteful to not take advantage of tax advantages the State gives nonprofits. I believe that we are to be good stewards of what God provides - paying money that we don't have to pay wouldn't be good stewardship IMHO. And as far as not having to pay sales tax on out of state items - this may depend on the state you are in, but here in Washington, if you buy something online from another state, you are technically supposed to still pay our state sales tax on that item - but instead of the retailer sending in the taxes, you are supposed to. We got hit a while back with a large purchase we had made out of state a number of years back where the state made us go back and pay sales taxes on it several YEARS later.
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~Kristin~
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RE: TAX EXEMPT STATUS? - 
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