•
•
• The government is
thus able to obtain influence over the church because the
churches have to report all their activities to the IRS when filing
taxes. The IRS than has to “approve” of a church’s
activities. If not approved, than the church is punished. The Indianapolis
Baptist Temple church building was seized in 2001 for not
withholding a portion of every employee's paycheck for federal taxes.
The church refused to withhold taxes from its employees’ checks,
because it would be “acting as an agent for a secular government
agency.”[14] This is despite
the fact that IBT would refuse tax benefits available for
being a religious organization and many of their employees paid
full taxes that the IBT had not
withheld.[15] The principle of
the matter was not the fact that the money
was not paid but that the church would not act as a tax
collector for the government. This IRS code gives the government
authority over the church that should not be permitted under the
Constitution.
•