[tarotuser]

A "religion" primarily assumes standard Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, etc: all of which have buildings, assets, collections, and such.

For those of us who either have a solitary practice or meet with a small group (coven), none of our costs for our practices are tax exempt. If we are large enough, we usually cannot be "acknowledged by the state" to get tax exempt status. When we do get enough people in our group, it's an uphill slog to even get acknowledged as 'real', although there are few and far between covens which have won what the Christians get already.

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/nonprofit/2011/03/witches-...

https://nonprofitquarterly.org/pagans-weigh-in-on-the-laws-o...

https://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Court-considers-neo...

Basically, the Christians get away with using tax exempt status, and then populate things like "megachurches" (aka: church-based tax fraud). Those of us with less common beliefs are given the short shrift, and default treat our beliefs as "not worthy of federal and state tax exemption".

When the IRS and state tax entities start playing games of discerning which belief is real and not, is a grave concern for 1FA. The state should never be in the business of saying whose beliefs are real or not.

[mrguyorama]

Providing tax exempt status to only churches you have "proven" to be churches should be seen as legislating religion. The only ACTUAL fair way to handle it is allow any organization to vie for charity style tax exempt status, with a high bar of charity required to succeed, and churches are otherwise no more an organization than your company's softball team.

Alternatively, nobody gets ANY tax exempt status, and we should stop using tax deductions as subsidies, because they are only really available to those with ample money to play with and can afford more experienced tax professionals

[gowld]

Your links explain how in the USA any belief does get non-profit status.

[tarotuser]

Then you grossly misread the articles.

For the majority religions, its still a paperwork game. However it's also rather standard filing and granting said non-profit status.

The minority religions are told time and again, that "we're not really religions and not worthy of non-profit status". And when we're able to do so, we fight for state recognition of our religion. Most of the times, this fails for us.

And naturally, there's some severe problems with "state recognition of religion leading to non-profit status" and "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion".