Quote:
Originally Posted by Slava
I’m not a constitutional expert, but it can’t possibly be in the charter that churches don’t need to pay property tax. That’s got to be fair game from that standpoint.
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No, but it does impact peoples' ability to worship as they choose to some extent. It's probably less of an issue for major religious entities like the Catholic church as much as minor ones. I would imagine that there are some religious institutions or centers that couldn't survive if they didn't have tax exempt status.
To take an extreme example, if you were to not only remove tax exempt status but say that all religious organizations have to now pay a hundred times as much property tax as any other entity, you wouldn't be discriminating on the basis of religion because it would hit all religions equally... but it'd still probably be contrary to the Charter because it would unduly infringe on peoples' freedom of religion.