Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 27, 1992 TAG: 9202270105
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE RELIGION WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
CHURCHES HAPPY TAX PLAN KILLED
Religious leaders from Western Virginia joined others around the country in a collective sigh of relief that President Bush will not press a plan to require tax reports on church donors.Bush late last week said he would not pursue a plan that would have forced churches to report the amounts and names of donors of more than $500 in a year.
The plan, originally proposed to go into effect in 1993, would have applied to churches with more than $25,000 in annual receipts and was aimed at reducing tax fraud.
Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department officials in Virginia and Washington either said they didn't know how much tax revenue the proposal would have added or did not return phone calls Wednesday.
One published report, however, said an estimated $100 million in additional taxes would have been collected through 1996 and $200 million in 1997.
"It would have been a nightmare for small congregations to do all the bookkeeping," said the Rev. Richard Bansemer, bishop of the Virginia Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Bansemer said he believes that the low threshold proposed for reporting - $500 - would include a major portion of the Lutheran membership.
The Rev. Fred Fisher, state overseer for the Church of God of Prophecy, likewise foresaw problems for volunteers at small churches. The additional bookkeeping and red tape would be "very cumbersome."
The proposal seemed unnecessary, Fisher said, because "most people pay their church contributions by check" and have those for records.
He and Bansemer pointed out that it is up to individuals to verify their contributions if they are questioned by the IRS.
John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute in Charlottesville, said he would have expected an immediate court challenge to the proposal had it been put into effect.
The court has specific definitions for what constitutes "entanglement of the government into religion" and "monitoring activities" fit into that, he said.
The plan would have put "the nose of the federal government into churches more than it needs to be," said Whitehead, whose organization takes on religious-rights cases.
Whitehead also worried that the idea that someone is tracking their donations might discourage some potential donors.
That was not a concern for the Rev. Kenneth Wright, pastor of First Baptist Church on North Jefferson Street in Roanoke.
He said he saw the proposal as part of the pattern of increasing governmental regulation of much of society. Wright said he didn't expect the plan to be put into effect in the near future, however.
His church already "strives to be as accountable and precise as possible in record-keeping," Wright said, so the prospect of having to report the numbers would not be a significant additional burden.
That also is true at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Salem, said the Rev. Robert Copenhaver.
Nevertheless, he said, he "would resist doing it" on several grounds.
Copenhaver expressed his primary reservation at having the church involved in the oversight process for the IRS. Also, the inevitable mountain of new paperwork certainly would be a "waste of trees."
Many small United Methodist Churches don't even have preprinted giving envelopes to help keep track of who contributes what, said the Rev. Eugene Carter, Roanoke district superintendent. The records required to make a report to the IRS don't exist in some churches, he said.
Some political observers saw Bush's reversal as part of a pattern of actions designed to undermine attacks by Pat Buchanan, his rival for the Republican presidential nomination.