So Vermont is proud of its precedent-setting history, and we hope to add to our list of firsts with functional single payer by decade's end. But wait you say, after outlawing slavery and allowing same sex unions, what else might this tiny right-next-to-the-US state have up its sleeve?
Vermont's Property Tax Exemption Study Committee is studying whether and how to collect property tax from public, pious, and charitable organizations. What no tax free real estate for the philosophers of selfishness? We'll see.
a majority of committee members expressed willingness to levy property taxes on groups ranging from Girl Scouts and humane societies to hospitals and churches.
The Committee knows how controversial and precedent-setting the proposal is.
Asked whether any other state has removed or partially lifted tax-exempt status for religious organizations, Peter Griffin of the Legislative Council said he was not aware of the precedent being set elsewhere. (Legislative Council advises lawmakers on the legal technicalities of their bills, but does not advise for or against their policy choices.)
The big question now is how much revenue removing exemptions would generate, given that presently the value of pious property is not reported. But the state is moving to get a handle on just how much property value and potential revenue is shielded.
[Bill Johnson, of the Department of Property Valuation and Review] said nonprofits can voluntarily report their insurance values to their towns in the meantime, and he is working with listers to get them used to valuing property that is traditionally exempted from property taxes.
The Committee will meet on
December 16 for a public hearing to present draft legislation. It is the beginning of a beginning, but
other signs of a shift toward taxing the business of piety may give us cause to imagine a world where pious organizations with massive holdings have to pay some property tax.
CONTEXT: So Vermont's central revolutionary icon, Ethan Allen, jeopardized his status when he published REASON, THE ONLY ORACLE OF MAN challenging the infallibility of the Church. Some choice quotes:
Admitting for argument sake that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament were originally of divine supernatural inspiration, and that their first manuscript copies were the infallible institutions of God, yet to trace them from their respective ancient dead languages, and different and diverse translations, from the obscure hieroglyphical pictures of characters, in which they were first written, through all the vicissitudes and alterations of human learning, prejudices, superstitions, enthusiasms and diversities of interests and manners, to our time, so as to present us with a perfect edition from its premised infallible original manuscript copies would be impossible.
The superstitious thus set up a spiritual discerning, independent of, and in opposition to reason, and their mere imaginations pass with each other, and with themselves, for infallible truth.
SHOUT OUT: Thanks to
VTDigger for following the Tax Exemption Study Committee's work. In Vermont as everywhere else, newspapers, particular ones which claim statewide reach, have shrunk to comic book facsimiles of their former selves. What many states may not have though is an equivalent to
VTDigger This news website has filled the gap left by the incredibly shrinking papers, and they regularly commit ACTUAL REAL LIVE JOURNALISM.