Tax Exemption and the Myxomycetous Sump

Boris Bittker, writing in the Yale Law Journal, described the federal tax code as “a dark, miasmic, myxomycetous sump.” With specific reference to tax exemption, Dean Kelley of the National Council of Churches notes that the code “affords lucrative careers to the hardy practitioners of tax law who have become adept at plumbing its murky depths and tracing its meandering bayous that to mere mortals seem so . . . obscure.”

Churches, being understandably devoted to the free exercise of religion, are regularly exercised about encroachments on tax exemption. Such encroachments typically begin at the edges with unpopular groups that many are reluctant to defend. Thus the 1983 Supreme Court ruling that denied tax exemptions to Bob Jones University because its religiously motivated ban on interracial dating violated “settled public policy.” The idea that tax-exempt organizations must conform to government policy has radical implications, and not just for churches.

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Richard John Neuhaus

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Boris Bittker, writing in the Yale Law Journal, described the federal tax code as “a dark, miasmic, myxomycetous sump.” With specific reference to tax exemption, Dean Kelley of the National Council of Churches notes that the code “affords lucrative careers to the hardy practitioners of tax law who have become adept at plumbing its murky depths and tracing its meandering bayous that to mere mortals seem so . . . obscure.”

Churches, being understandably devoted to the free exercise of religion, are regularly exercised about encroachments on tax exemption. Such encroachments typically begin at the edges with unpopular groups that many are reluctant to defend. Thus the 1983 Supreme Court ruling that denied tax exemptions to Bob Jones University because its religiously motivated ban on interracial dating violated “settled public policy.” The idea that tax-exempt organizations must conform to government policy has radical implications, and not just for churches.