I couldn't find where the infographic got it's stats from, but I did find an article from the
Council of Secular Humanism with a similar set of figures:
Federal Income Tax Subsidy - $35.3billion
State Income Tax Subsidy $6.billion
Property Tax Subsidy $26.2 billion
Investment Tax Subsidy $41 million
Parsonage Subsidy $1.2 billion
Faith Based Initiatives Subsidy $2.2 billion
Total $71 billion
This is a highly selective comparison. Churches have many differences with a movie theatre – they don’t charge admission, and they don’t make a profit for two. If churches did make a profit, they would fail the test of tax exemption under 501c, whether or not they were religious foundations.
It has calculated this by taking the total annual donations to religious organizations (which it elsewhere states to be $100 billion) and applying the top rate corporate tax rate to all of it. But corporate tax doesn't work like that. Businesses are allowed to deduct their expenses before their taxable income is calculated. Churches typically use most of their income on staff salaries, building maintenance, office equipment and the like – all of which are legitimate expenses, and would be deducted from income by any normal business. And that's ignoring that most corporations don't pay 35% tax.
Payments under the Faith Based Initiatives programs are not simply made to churches for their own benefit - they are for specific charitable and social purposes. It's quite silly to take money from a soup kitchen, give it to food stamps and call it a monetary gain
So that leaves property taxes and the parsonage subsidy. So the subsidy is more likely in the 20-30 billion range... And come to think of it do American charities get property tax exemptions? I'm pretty sure a lot in Canada do.
