No Religious Tax Breaks

Tax-free donations to charities are around $3.1 billion per year in Australia, which gives us a back-of-the-envelope tax deduction figure of around $1 billion. That is no small amount.

However the Secular Party has determined that the lost income for the government due to religious exemption is $31 billion, or the same as our military spending. This is because charities are exempt from income tax, GST, Land Tax, fringe benefits tax and perhaps significantly capital gains tax. Religious charities are also exempt from record keeping. And organised religions, especially the Catholic Church, have substantial investments such as property from which they derive income.

If the truth is somewhere in the middle, that is a massive funding boost for a party with a lot of progressive policies.

Because the most popular religious belief is rapidly becoming not having one, and because of the harm some religious orders have had on children (see royal commissions into child abuse), the argument that organised religion is beneficial to society is getting harder to accept.

Religions can still have non-profit arms that provide charitable work and have tax exemption. They just need to be separate entities.

This would have happen a long time ago, except religions are powerful, they control a lot of votes, and they have some leaders as followers, including Scott Morrison. To get this policy happening, we would need the support of everyone except the Coalition, and a reason for doing it – to provide funds for something more beneficial.

So our policy at this stage is the beginning – a report into exactly how much lost tax we are talking about. And that will require financial reporting from religions.