“…losing the housing allowance would cause significant harm to churches and ministers — particularly those with small congregations.“

A nationwide atheist group is asking religious leaders to take Jesus’ advice and render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s — especially when it comes to taking the federal tax break on their housing.

The Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation says the housing exemption gives churches an unfair advantage because they can compensate their leaders with tax-free housing. Other nonprofits, such as the foundation, can’t do that. So it’s suing the federal government to outlaw the housing allowance.

“We think the law is rotten at the core,” said co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor. “It is not constitutional, it is not fair, and it is not necessary.”

But the exemption’s supporters point to a similar court dispute in 2002 that went nowhere after Congress almost unanimously rushed to save the housing break.

Dan Busby, who runs the watchdog group Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. thinks Congress would do the same today.

“I don’t think this lawsuit is going anywhere,” he said. “Both houses of Congress don’t want to touch this.”

Busby says that losing the housing allowance would cause significant harm to churches and ministers — particularly those with small congregations. A minister who gets a $20,000 housing allowance, for example, saves about $6,000 a year in taxes, he said.

“For a minister, I don’t know if that would make or break things,” he said. “But it might.”

READ MORE
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100216/NEWS06/2160338/1970/news04/Atheist+group+files+suit+to+end+tax+break+for+ministers [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced in this article is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]