Italy’s Catholic Church will be forced to pay taxes starting in 2013 after the EU pressured the country’s government to pass a controversial law stripping the Church of its historic property tax exemption.
The Catholic Church in Italy is excluded from paying taxes on its land if at least a part of a Church property is used non-commercially – for instance, a chapel in a bed-and-breakfast. “The regulatory framework will be definite by January 1, 2013 – the start of the fiscal year – and will fully respect the [European] Community law,” Italian premier Mario Monti’s government said in a statement…
The move could net Italy revenues of 500 million to 2 billion euros annually across the country, municipal government associations said. The extra income from previously exempt properties in Rome alone – including hotels, restaurants and sports centres – could reach 25.5 million euros a year…
The measure came after the country’s leadership decided in February to alter Italy’s property tax code, ending the Church’s longstanding privileges due to the severe debt crisis.
Last December, after new austerity measures were adopted in the country, 130,000 Italians signed an online petition urging the government to strip the Church of its tax exemption.
“It was time that they paid, too, with all the exemptions they’ve had throughout the years,” Marco Catalano, a 35-year-old shopkeeper in Rome, told the New York Times in February, adding that he goes to church twice a month. “They own the most beautiful buildings in downtown Rome, on Italian soil, and rent them out at market prices…
Overdue. Not only in Italy. Not only regarding the Catholic Church.
Living in a nation with a constitution requiring separation of church and state, it is truly absurd that we still don’t collect property taxes, business taxes on the money-making, profit-generating properties owned by religious institutions.
Photon, if you’re going to apply Godwin’s law, you should at least know the law. From your link “The law and its corollaries would not apply to discussions covering known mainstays of Nazi Germany such as genocide, eugenics or…”The discussion is very much about eugenics.
American Militia Groups News Alert: Sandy Hook school disobey the terrorist organization Bilderberg Group by not house training the little children to worship Devil. The Bilderberg Group also known as the KKK sent a kill squad over to execute all those little children in school to make an example out of them. The message was: You must house train your little children, little niece, little nephews in America to worship the Devil in school or they all must die.