Back in the days when religious places of worship are solely a place of service to God, with no intentions of turning it to a place of business or transactions, I'm sure it does not took very long to come to a decision of not including them to pay tax.
However, in this era where we have so many religious settings turning against the ancient rule, making it even more difficult for worshippers to come worship in peace when they have nothing to offer as offering, it becomes totally questionable if we can still tag our places of worship as of old.
I saw a news headline from my phone notification sometime this week, of a lady who complained bitterly about her pastor announcing that if you can not afford to pay ordinary a thousand naira as offering then you're better off staying at your house and not come to church. Like, that was too harsh and inconsiderate to come from a religious leader to his church members. So definitely, church cause has been changed and not the way it used to be where the needy and the poor can see churches as safe place to be even when they had no money.
Most of these religious leaders own properties and investments that even church members who donate voluntarily here and there do not have and this is not in anyway coming from me as a hate speech but come to think of it, these properties are still attached and tagged with church to evade tax.
My take on this is that, churches remain churches, mosques remain mosques no matter how much they are generating from there as
revenue or something. It still very much come from different people donating here and there either voluntarily or forcefully. It's very much like Non-profit organizations (NGO), they don't get taxed as well because they are not for profit but for charity and getting their income from donations by funders and sponsors.
So, no matter the heat and level of the debate, religious place of worship can't be taxed either looking at it formally or informally BUT my stand here is that for every property, investment set up aside the building called place of worship, either it is a school, companies, training centers or whatsoever that are established by the place of worship and tagged with the places of worship should not be exempted from paying tax.
Basically and frankly speaking, they are diversified ways of earning and can be counted as a sources of income for these places of worship, so they should definitely be taxed. Except if these firms are established to be for charitable purposes of which they are definitely not because members of these places of worship even find it difficult to afford the fees of the schools established by their places of worship. So it's no longer a church or mosques schools but a distinguished business of its own.
In conclusion, places of worship are sacred places with no specific source of income as required by a tax payer so under the law, they may not be considered as tax payer but every other establishment founded by them should be taxed and not exempted.
I'll be dropping my 🖊️ here on the Hive Learners community prompt
Thanks for reading through 🤗
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