Temple Tax

[thesometimesaint]

I am a keen visitor to ancient churches and cathedrals bere in the UK. Of the many I have visited, almost all have been left open for visitors. On the few occasions where this has not been the case, a note has been left on the notice board in the porch giving the number of the warden who has the key. A website will also give details of access.

Cathedrals often ask for a voluntary contribution, which are voluntary. You are under no obligation to pay. Museums operate under the same fashion, the Ashmolean in Oxford for instance.

I have no idea why the church bothered pursuing this. The law is quite clear.

[Thinking]

We don't even ask for a voluntary contribution for visitors during Temple open house. We give free guided tours.

 

A temple open house cannot be compared to other places of worship being open to anybody.

[thesometimesaint]

A temple open house cannot be compared to other places of worship being open to anybody.

 

Why not? The only reason I can see is that it's Mormon and not some other religions' building.

[Gray]

Why not? The only reason I can see is that it's Mormon and not some other religions' building.

 

Because the open house is for a very limited time. After that it is not open to the public. The rule seems to be applied fairly to other religious buildings (Anglican included) that are not open to the public

[Thinking]

Why not? The only reason I can see is that it's Mormon and not some other religions' building.

 

Persecution Complex

[Bikeemikey]

There is no functional difference. You are carving out an exemption because of a religion rather than treating them all equally.

I have no idea what you are referring to... The difference is very clear. Public houses of worship have the full deduction, private houses of worship and other sorts of religious and non-profit structures do not.

Please provide an example of what you mean by no functional difference. Right now I am not following you.

[thesometimesaint]

Persecution Complex

 

I don't have a persecution complex. But I do insist that what is good for the goose is also good for the gander.

[thesometimesaint]

I have no idea what you are referring to... The difference is very clear. Public houses of worship have the full deduction, private houses of worship and other sorts of religious and non-profit structures do not.

Please provide an example of what you mean by no functional difference. Right now I am not following you.

 

Say I open a church building in a strip mall, and you build a church building in the same strip mall. You do your administrative work in the chapel, I do it in the office. What is the functional difference that would force you to pay a higher tax than I do?

[frank_jessop]

I don't have a persecution complex. But I do insist that what is good for the goose is also good for the gander.

Who is the goose and who is the gander? A non-exempt property owner who pays a full tax would say "Full tax good enough for me, it is good enough for everyone."

A building with restricted, that is only open a very small percentage of the entire group which owns the building, is not a building that can reasonably be considered "open to the public".

[frank_jessop]

Is there a link to the argument the Church made?

found the opinion, but I can not get the link to post properly.

http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/Pages/search.aspx# delete this space {%22languageisocode%22:[%22ENG%22], delete this space %22documentcollectionid2%22: delete this space [%22JUDGMENTS%22], delete this sapce %22itemid%22: delete this space [%22001-141369%22]}

[Calm]

Why not? The only reason I can see is that it's Mormon and not some other religions' building.

Because it is not open for the purpose of worship and it is only for a very limited time of its operation....two weeks every 20 years or so?

[Calm]

I don't have a persecution complex. But I do insist that what is good for the goose is also good for the gander.

Then demonstrate another faith in the UK that has a private area of worship where ordinaces, prayers and sermons are given and is not solely an office for administration that is not taxed like the LDS temple is taxed.

[Calm]

Say I open a church building in a strip mall, and you build a church building in the same strip mall. You do your administrative work in the chapel, I do it in the office. What is the functional difference that would force you to pay a higher tax than I do?

Please demonstrate where the area of worship is taxed. That is all that is significant.

[Calm]

found the opinion, but I can not get the link to post properly.http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/Pages/search.aspx# delete this space {%22languageisocode%22:[%22ENG%22], delete this space %22documentcollectionid2%22: delete this space [%22JUDGMENTS%22], delete this sapce %22itemid%22: delete this space [%22001-141369%22]}

Thanks for trying.

The blue link took me to the main site, just typed in church of Jesus Christ of latter and it came up.

Maybe this link will be a bit more direct:

http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/Pages/search.aspx#{"fulltext":["Church%20of%20Jesus%20Christ%20of%20latter%20day%20saints"],"itemid":["001-141369"]}

Nope, still goes to main page...one extra step no big deal.

Again thanks.

[Calm]

First question...why only Preston and not London temple?

Is there any chance this was done to establish a legal precedent for the temple being a private place of worship with requirements to enter....thus providing precedent for a challenge to open its doors to a nonmember or a member without a temple recommend?

[Calm]

. On 30 July 2008 the House of Lords unanimously dismissed the further appeal (Gallagher (Valuation Officer) v. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints [2008] UKHL 56) holding, on the basis of an earlier judgment (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. Henning [1964] AC 420), that as a matter of domestic law a place of “public religious worship” must be one that is open to the general public. Four of the five Law Lords further dismissed the applicant’s arguments under the Convention, holding that the liability to pay 20% business rates on the Temple did not fall within the ambit of Article 9, since Mormons were still free to manifest their religion and since the statutory requirement to be open to the public applied equally to all religious buildings and did not target Mormons in particular. In the words of Lord Hoffmann, with whom Lords Carswell and Mance agreed:

“13. In order to constitute discrimination on grounds of religion, however, the alleged discrimination must fall ‘within the ambit’ of a right protected by article 9, in this case, the right to manifest one’s religion. In the present case, the liability of the Temple to a non-domestic rate (reduced by 80% on account of the charitable nature of its use) would not prevent the Mormons from manifesting their religion. But I would not regard that as conclusive. If the legislation imposed rates only upon Mormons, I would regard that as being within the ambit of article 9 even if the Mormons could easily afford to pay them. But the present case is not one in which the Mormons are taxed on account of their religion. It is only that their religion prevents them from providing the public benefit necessary to secure a tax advantage. That seems to me an altogether different matter.

Lord Hope of Craighead agreed with Lord Hoffmann and added:

“31. ... I do not see this case falling within the ambit of article 9. Those who are qualified to worship in the Temple are not prevented from manifesting their religion or their belief by the fact that it is subject to non-domestic rating, the legislation is not directed at Mormons because of what they believe in. It applies generally to all whose religious beliefs and practices prevent them from participating in public religious worship. It is easier to see the case as falling within the ambit of article 1 of Protocol 1, but the second paragraph of that article preserves the right of the State to secure the payment of taxes or other contributions or penalties. In my opinion Parliament’s decision as to the scope of the exemption was within the discretionary area of judgement afforded to it by that paragraph. ...”

50. If that is so, there is, as it seems to me, an element of discrimination that requires to be justified. The discrimination consists of the denial of rating relief for the Temple on the ground that, although a place of religious worship, it is not a place of public religious worship. No one who is not a Mormon, or who, although a Mormon, does not possess a ‘recommend’ permitting him or her entry, can enter the Temple .... The ‘open doors’ requirement in order to enable premises used for religious worship to qualify for rating relief discriminates, adversely to the Mormons, between premises used for religious worship that are open to the public and those that are not. If that is right, the discrimination requires to be justified if it is to escape being held unlawful

51. I would, for my part, unhesitatingly hold that the grant of rating relief to premises for religious services that are open to the public and the withholding of that relief from premises for religious services which take place behind closed doors through which only a select few may pass is well justifiable and within the margin of appreciation available to individual signatory states. First, states may justifiably take the view that the practice of religion is beneficial both to the individuals who practise it as well as to the community of whom the individuals form part, and that, therefore, relief from rating for premises where religious worship takes place is in the public interest. But, second, states may also recognise that, although religion may be beneficial both to individuals and to the community, it is capable also of being divisive and, sometimes, of becoming dangerously so. No one who lives in a country such as ours, with a community of diverse ethnic and racial origins and of diverse cultures and religions, can be unaware of this. Religion can bind communities together; but it can also emphasise their differences. In these circumstances secrecy in religious practices provides the soil in which suspicions and unfounded prejudices can take root and grow; openness in religious practices, on the other hand, can dispel suspicions and contradict prejudices. I can see every reason why a state should adopt a general policy under which fiscal relief for premises used for religious worship is available where the premises are open to the general public and is withheld where they are not. In my opinion, the withholding of rating relief from the Temple does not constitute a breach of article 14, whether considered in the context of article 9 or, for the same reasons, in the context of article 1 of the 1st Protocol

“By the Act of 1833 the legislature was intending to extend the privileges of exemption enjoyed by the Anglican churches to similar places of worship belonging to other denominations. Since the Church of England worshipped with open doors and its worship was in that sense public, it is unlikely that the legislature intended by the word ‘public’ some more subjective meaning which would embrace in the phrase ‘public religious worship’ any congregational worship observed behind doors closed to the public.

I find it impossible, therefore, to hold that the words ‘places of public religious worship’ includes places which, though from the worshippers’ point of view they were public as opposed to domestic, yet in the more ordinary sense were not public since the public was excluded.

... Furthermore, it is less likely on general grounds that Parliament intended to give exemption to religious services that exclude the public, since exemptions from rating, though not necessarily consistent, show a general pattern of intention to benefit those activities which are for the good of the general public. All religious services that open their doors to the public may, in an age of religious tolerance, claim to perform some spiritual service to the general public. ...”

[Calm]

"In these circumstances secrecy in religious practices provides the soil in which suspicions and unfounded prejudices can take root and grow; openness in religious practices, on the other hand, can dispel suspicions and contradict prejudices"

So because secrecy will cause nonmembers to be suspicious of a faith and therefore possibly lead to their doing something wrong, the faith whose members are not involved in prejudice, etc are penalised?

Don't buy this section of the account, this guy sounds like he has an issue with religion over all.

The rest of the arguments seem solid to me.

[Calm]

The rule was of general application and concerned only the use made of the building; it did not discriminate on the basis of religious belief. Any of the applicant’s places of worship, such as its chapels and stake centres, that were open to the public, had the benefit of the exemption. Other religious organisations also operated a mixture of private and public places of worship. For example, whilst Church of England churches were usually open to the public, its religious buildings run by closed orders or schools or college chapels might not be. Where such buildings were not open to the public, they were not exempt from rates. There had been no direct discrimination against the applicant Church; the complaint should be characterised as one of indirect discrimination

The Government was plainly entitled to draw a distinction between the direct benefit to the public drawn from worshipping within a religious building and the kind of indirect and amorphous benefits alluded to by the applicant

[Calm]

.  The applicant reasoned that the Preston temple and its curtilage, including the vestry or dressing room, utility rooms, office space used for temple administration and refectory used for dining by temple worshippers, ought to be exempt from business rates. However, it emphasised that its dispute with the Government concerned the principle of the exemption in relation to the temple, rather than its precise extent. The tax provisions at issue resulted in differential treatment. They imposed a tax burden on the applicant’s temple which was not applied to other religious structures. More importantly, they excluded the applicant’s most sacred space and rituals from eligibility for tax exemption, while granting exempt status to the full range of worship for other denominations. Implicit in this differentiation were non-neutral State assumptions, stereotypes and stigmatisation that operated prejudicially against the applicant and those if its members who chose to engage in temple worship.

.  The applicant contended that its temple worship should be treated with the same respect and accorded the same tax exempt treatment as the worship facilities of the Church of England and other denominations. Temple worship, by its very nature as understood by its believers, required that only those who voluntarily lived by the kinds of commitments made in the temple should be allowed to participate. This was not a case of worship being made private for the purposes of being exclusive or to provide private benefit; it was because the very nature of the worship as understood by its believers required privacy to promote the sacred character of the worship. The relevant analogy would be to insist that the tax exemption be denied to space devoted to confessionals or to the area behind the iconostasis in Orthodox churches. Just as an invitation to the general public to enter these spaces would disrupt sacred practices, so the nature of temple worship would be destroyed if there were a general requirement that the public be able to sit in. It was inappropriate for State officials to engage in drawing lines that discriminated between religions on the basis of mistaken understandings of the nature and impact of religious practices or merely because such practices are different from those of more familiar religions.

.  Once differential treatment had been established, it was for the respondent State to show that the difference in treatment could be justified. The Government had asserted that the legitimate aim of the provision was to “confine the benefit of the exemption from the general obligation to pay rates to buildings that offer a public benefit”. While this was in principle a legitimate aim, the Government had failed to show that public benefit did not similarly flow from the applicant’s temple worship. Far from being rooted in objective considerations, the difference in treatment reflected non-objective assumptions about how religion benefits the public. The average attendance at congregational services in the temple at Preston was approximately 950 a week, which would not compare unfavourably with churches of the Church of England and other places of religious worship. The public benefit flowing directly from temple worship included, among other things, extensive participation in charitable and humanitarian endeavours, commitment to good citizenship and careful devotion to family responsibilities. Sacred pledges made in the course of collective worship in the temple, which were then lived out in the world, redounded to the benefit of society at large. The money taken in tax ceased to be available for the religious witness and charitable mission of the applicant and cut into its ability to construct additional worship facilities. While it was true as a general matter that systems of taxation must use broad categories to be workable, the situation was different where, as here, an ostensibly neutral provision imposed a disproportionate and discriminatory burden when applied to the applicant’s religion. A discriminatory tax provision could not be justified merely because it was broad.

[Calm]

.  Generally, in order for an issue to arise under Article 14 there must be a difference in the treatment of persons in analogous, or relevantly similar, situations (Burden v. the United Kingdom [GC], no. 13378/05, § 60, ECHR 2008‑). However, this is not the only facet of the prohibition of discrimination in Article 14. The right not to be discriminated against in the enjoyment of the rights guaranteed under the Convention is also violated when States, without an objective and reasonable justification, fail to treat differently persons whose situations are significantly different

.  The applicant’s complaint concerns the rating status of its temple in Preston. This building is considered by the members of the applicant Church to constitute its most sacred centre. It is used as a place of congregational religious worship by those who have established their devotion and been accorded a “recommend” (see paragraphs 6-7 above).  In the domestic proceedings, the opinion of the majority of the House of Lords was that the subject-matter of complaint did not come within the ambit of Article 9 of the Convention, with the consequence that Article 14 did not apply, since the refusal of the tax exemption did not prevent Mormons from manifesting their religion and since the tax exemption rules were applied neutrally to all religious groups and not directed specifically at the applicant Church (see paragraph 11 above). The Court can well understand such an assessment by the national courts of the facts of the present case, although it may be that in certain circumstances issues concerning the operation of religious buildings, including expenses incurred as a result of the taxation status of such buildings, are capable of having an impact on the exercise of the right of members of religious groups to manifest religious belief (see, mutatis mutandis, Association Les Témoins de Jéhovah v. France, no. 8916/05, §§ 48-54, 30 June 2011). The Court does not, however, need to decide whether, in the particular circumstances, the applicant’s complaint about the application to it of the tax exemption legislation falls within the ambit of Article 9, so that Article 14 applies, since for the reasons given below it has come to the conclusion that the claim of discrimination is unfounded on its merits.

[Calm]

To establish differential treatment, the applicant Church relied on the argument that, because of the nature of its doctrine, which holds that access to the temple should be restricted to its most devout members who hold a current “recommend”, the law which granted a full exemption from rates only to buildings designated for “public religious worship” provided a lower fiscal advantage to the Mormon Church than to such other faiths as to not restrict access to any of their places of worship, even the most sacred. The Court agrees with the Government that the applicant’s complaint might, at most, be characterised as one of indirect discrimination. However, on the facts of the case, it is open to doubt whether the refusal to accord an exemption in respect of the applicant Church’s temple in Preston gave rise to any difference of treatment of comparable groups, given that the tax law in question applied in the same way to, and produced the same result in relation to, all religious organisations, including the Church of England in respect of its private chapels. Neither is the Court convinced that the applicant Church was in a significantly different position from other churches because of its doctrine concerning worship in its temples, so as to call for differential treatment involving exemption from the contested tax, since other faiths likewise do not allow access of the public to certain of their places of worship for doctrinal reasons

n this connection, the Court notes that all the applicant’s places of worship that are open to the public, such as its chapels and stake centres, had the benefit of the full exemption from rates. Indeed, the stake centre situated on the same site in Preston as the temple was accepted as a “place of public religious worship”, benefiting from the statutory exemption (see paragraph 8 above). The temple itself, which is not open to the public, does not attract the full exemption, but does benefit from an 80% reduction in rates in view of its use for charitable purposes (see paragraph 8 above). This 80% reduction can be seen as reflecting the elements of public benefit which the applicant identifies as flowing from the nature of temple worship. Neither in its objects nor in its effects does the legislation prompting the contested measure go to the legitimacy of Mormon beliefs. The legislation is neutral, in that it is the same for all religious groups as regards the manifestation of religious beliefs in private; and indeed produces exactly the same negative consequences for the officially established Christian Church in England (the Church of England) as far as private chapels are concerned. Moreover, the remaining liability to rates is relatively low, in monetary terms, and the impact on the applicant of the impugned measure cannot be compared to the detriment suffered by the applicants in cases such as Moscow Branch of the Salvation Army v. Russia, no. 72881/01, ECHR 2006XI, Religionsgemeinschaft der Zeugen Jehovas and Others v. Austria, no. 40825/98, 31 July 2008, Savez crkava “Riječživota” and Others v. Croatia, no. 7798/08, 9 December 2010

[Calm]

For those who don't want to read all the excerpts this is the key one IMO:

"indeed produces exactly the same negative consequences for the officially established Christian Church in England (the Church of England) as far as private chapels are concerned"

Since the Church was arguing its very form of worship required sacred space and therefore it was being discriminated against since other faiths were not required to pay the higher rate on any form of their worship and they were proven wrong IMO by the demonstration of those private sacred spaces of the Church of England were also taxed, it seems to me a very valid call.

The only thing that might be argued is that the second is a personal taste choice while the previous is one dictated by the very nature of the faith, but I would disagree as it appears to include closed orders which seems to me parallel situations (they have a belief that their faith is to be performed "behind closed doors".

[Calm]

 

3.  The tax exemption was a privilege. It was not a right. The application of this privilege did not interfere with the exercise of the right to freedom of religion and we therefore conclude that the facts of the case do not fall within the ambit of Article 9. We would have preferred to declare this case inadmissible.

--------

And that concludes the interesting bits.