While it didn’t make a big splash in the initial analysis of the House tax reform bill, one provision in there is interesting and disappointing in both small and large ways.
The GOP bill will repeal the Johnson Amendment which, back in the 1950s, basically said that a church (or other charitable organization) that was enjoying tax-exempt status could not, in turn, engage in political activity in favor of a specific candidate, because the tax exemption was going to support their charitable work, not their partisan politicking.
While the Johnson Amendment is rarely actually invoked by the IRS, it’s been a bugbear for conservative Christians as a suppression of their Religious Freedom. “How can we possibly preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ freely,” they cry, “if we can’t urge all our parishioners every Sunday to vote for Donald Trump?”
(Note: campaigning on behalf of a political candidate is an activity of the Kingdom of Earth, not the Kingdom of Heaven. This is nowhere more apparent than Christian churches supporting Donald Trump. Thus endeth the lesson.)
Of course, this provision in the tax bill will be much more consequential than just allowing even-more-partisan sermons on Sundays. It’s been suggested that repealing the Johnson Amendment will make activist conservative churches the target for massive voter donation money laundering schemes — all of it tax deductible, to boot! — oversight of which will be zealously resisted by conservative Christians who think that they should be able to directly influence the State, but the State shouldn’t have an control over them — even as they sell their heritage for a mess of pottage.
Trump Tax Bill Repeals Limits on Politicking From the Pulpit
Would that we had the political will to start taxing churches based on this.
It's a thing christianists have been wanting since Nixon; at this point I'm just waiting for the unintended consequences to start rolling in.
+John Bump If not taxing churches, then (more appropriately) removing the tax-exempt status of donations to them.