SHOULD TAXATION BE IMPOSED ON THESE MUSHROOMING HANDY CLAPPY ‘CHURCHES?’

While Churches, like Caesar’s wife, must be above suspicion, pure and honest, my sources reveal that the conduct of a single church could lead to a huge blow to the entire religious society and erode public trust in the institution.

Imposing taxes on these mushrooming ‘churches’ will be justice enough to them since many self-proclaimed pastors have turned each and every square room around your rented house into a business center in the name of ‘where two or more meet the holy spirit is amongst them’ but when you take a keen look into that square room in the ground floor of your house is that what you see even close to worshipping?

Many critics and naysayers are not going to agree with my school of thought about the tax to be imposed onto these churches. See, that church started this morning is just a branch of that which was started last year, but due to wrangles between the pastor and the woke individual who is not comfortable with how the church affairs are carried out, he ought to rather ship out secure a room and start his own ‘church’ rather than stay in a place where the minority voices are always futile.

With the spiritual knowledge and interpretation those woke individuals have gained from the Holy Scripture overtime, they’ll be recruiting their ardent minorities as the founding members of their churches who at this point will also act as their lap dogs. Most of my readers know that this has been the main source of chaos around their dwelling estates, the recent one was seen in Mombasa, Kenya where the pastor stabbed his wife during a church service on the pulpit and then slit his throat main reason being dispute over the ownership of the church.

A panacea to this never ending problem would be imposing tax to these mushrooming churches. Just as the Turnover Tax to the SMEs, the taxman should come up with a name of tax which will be more apt for these churches. The tax will be charged on any donations and contributions these churches receive at a certain percentage and is to be filed after a specified period of time which will be stipulated by the Taxman. Taxation will not only serve a purpose of bottleneck, but will also be for productivity purposes of a countries economy. This will be able to reduce conflict and make the churches to act as one by serving their main sole purpose of preparing the individuals in readiness for Christ’s second coming. In addition, this will bring back the worshipping modesty, decorum and discipline which befit the churches and by having few main or mother churches which serve their main function as stated by the Holy Scripture which I won’t mention today, we will once be in the forefront of serving the sole purpose of religion.

“You know these days the church even organize fundraising with main agenda of purchasing pastor’s car” a source said. Under Chapter 470 of Income Tax Act of Kenya, donations made to charitable organizations which exist with the purpose of eliminating distress and poverty are always Allowable Expenses but is that the main purpose of this donation made to pastor? Should it be classified under Non Allowable expenses? The Taxman has a best answer.

I know religious and rights groups will say this idea will be an infringement on the right to worship but what matters is that this imposition will be timely in this period when the country is at its nadir and spending 763 billion for debt repayment and pensions. Statistics shows that the number of these mushrooming churches is beyond imagination. Are these boreholes that give people water? I don’t think we have as many boreholes. Do we even have as many factories? The taxation will help tighten rules on registration and functioning of the churches as my idea puts it through any church which is found not to have an active license or up to date tax records must be charged accordingly and these licenses must be renewed annually if not monthly.

Just as mentioned earlier, you will find such a mess of churches in society which has nothing to offer as ours. In Kenya and Africa, there are those who want to see us in such chaos and when authorities intervene and stop them, they lament that it is a human rights abuse. People should have a right to worship in whatever church but not in a mess or fraud.

Our country has not yet reached level where it needs all these churches, such a big number of churches is not even suitable in bigger and developed economies that have means and systems to sustain them, this is one of scenarios on how development can be explained. Kenya still doesn’t have the luxury and means to sustain such churches. It is not rocket science to interpret the graph below.

Let me finish with a personal anecdote. I was born and raised in this country and I’ve been able to see these churches sprout each and every day with thrust, but the most mind boggling thing is that these churches aren’t serving their main purpose. A lot of people fail to do background assessment when they want to join these churches and hence end up regretting their gross miscalculation in spiritual decision making. Just like Dr. David Ndii would put it, No individual owes society more contribution to change than any other. Moreover no one has a right to make demands of others. It’s not an entitlement. You do your bit as you see fit. I do mine as I see fit, but until you take part in yours, we will continue to repeat our horrible socioeconomic mistakes.

Written by
John Andele
I’m primarily a Finance Scholar just getting started in Finance academia but also interested in reading and engaging in all sorts of social commentary.