The really obvious step is for every church to publicly list the salaries of its top five employees, as non-church nonprofits are all required to do on their 990 forms to the IRS. The scandal is that so many churches don’t even let their members know what the pastors’ salaries are. It would be a good project for someone in my town, Bloomington, Indiana, to call up all the churches and find out the salaries and put them on a list somewhere. I wonder how many would refuse. It would be very good to have a list of those refusing.
I think churches should be required, like other nonprofits, to file their budgets and top-five salaries and which relatives of the leaders get contracts and make money off of the organization. I can’t see a downside to this, actually, for honest churches, and it would help tremendously in warning people about corrupt churches. An atheist group was trying to sue to get this done last year. They’ll lose, and they should, but I considered filing an amicus brief saying they should lose (because the Constitution does not require this) but it would be good if Congress would legislate to require it for tax-exempt status.
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