Amid calls to #TaxTheChurches – what and how much do US religious organizations not pay the taxman?

  The hashtag #TaxTheChurches began trending on Twitter in mid-July.

  The spark was allegations about the wealth of celebrity pastor Joel Osteen. But it wasn’t the first time that “tax the churches” has circulated. In fact, it is slogan that long predates social media – Frank Zappa was singing it back in 1981, and Mark Twain expressed similar sentiments many decades before that.

“Small government” is an empty Republican mantra

  Favoring “small government” has long been a Republican and conservative mantra. It is also an empty one. It’s a shame that some libertarians have adopted it to describe libertarianism.

  After all, what does “small government” mean? A smaller IRS? A more streamlined DEA? A fascist Social Security system? A reformed Medicare system? A 10 percent cut in the military budget. Fewer CIA assassinations? Fewer coups and invasions of foreign countries? Reduced secret surveillance? Less immigration highway checkpoints within the United States? A reduction in no-knock raids and asset forfeiture? A smaller border wall?

Richard M. Ebeling: The entitlement state and America’s fiscal crisis

  The Republican and Democrat Party Conventions are now behind us, but through all the cheers and jeers, hoopla and poopla, warnings of a dark and dangerous future or promises of a bright and beautiful shape-of-things-to-come, one of the most serious shadows hanging over America was hardly mentioned at all: the unsustainability of the “entitlement” programs of the welfare state.

  In fact, Clinton and the Democrats have proposed to both maintain and expand the redistributive state, and Trump has expressed his intention of not challenging Social Security or Medicare.

Jacob G. Hornberger: Help the poor by abolishing the income tax

  The standard leftist position on helping the poor is: Increase income taxes on the rich and give the money to the poor in the form of welfare. The idea is that it’s just not fair that someone has more money when someone has less money. By equalizing people’s financial conditions, through the force of a progressive income tax and a welfare state, the financial plight of the poor will be improved.

  The left, however, is wrong. As our American ancestors, who lived without income taxation for more than a century, learned, the best way to help the poor would be by abolishing the income tax (and the IRS).

Jacob G. Hornberger: Income taxation protects the rich and hurts the poor

  Statists love to tell us how the income tax helps the poor by taxing the rich and equalizing wealth. That’s just sheer nonsense. For one thing, most of the money they take from people with income taxes is used to fund the welfare-warfare state, very little of which actually ends up in the hands of the poor. Moreover, to the extent that the money does end up in the hands of the poor, it accomplishes nothing more than making them dependent on government largess rather than making them independent, self-sufficient individuals.