Posts by 3410
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So even if Sanitarium Australia doesn't have to pay federal income or profit taxes as a wholly-owned religious company, that does not apply to NZ.
Are you sure about that? The above-cited Listener article seems to indicate (though it's not really explicit) that that is not the case (page 2.) I also remember a TV piece about the same time.
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The Listener (Feb 2008): The God dividend
What bothers him is that – despite undiminishing poverty and growing secularisation – many churches and religious groups sit on a largely undisclosed stash of property holdings, investment funds and trading revenues as part of a valuable portfolio made all the more valuable by their tax-exempt status as charitable organisations.
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So, social services run by churches, sure. Preaching, not so much.
I agree.
I sure wasn't thinking of subsidised cornflakes when I said "good use".
Mmmm, subsidised cornflakes. (But, yeah, of course you weren't. I should perhaps stop quoting as a jumping-off point and only do so to reply directly; it creates confusion.)
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Not to say they don't put it to good use.
And not to say that anyone else doesn't also put their income to good use. Face it; in this day and age it's institutionalised robbery.
If night-shift supermarket workers on $12 an hour can pay income tax then so can Sanitarium (annual revenue: A$300 million) as far as I'm concerned.
... unless someone wants to enlighten me as to exactly why Skippy cornflakes are more religious than Kellog's cornflakes, and thus exempt from income tax (which they are.)
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How much tax revenue do we all think the Crown is actually missing out on from mainstream religions due to their charitable status?
They take in donations (lost GST maybe?) and use it to pay staff, keep buildings and do other stuff??
I think you'd be suprised. They use it to buy buildings. Some churches have, as I understand it, property portfolios worth hundreds of millions of dollars in Auckland alone.
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As if the Greens weren't going in all the wrong direction either. Some of us are simply despairing.
Well, yes. I meant that more in an if-an-election-were-held-tomorrow sense than in an actually-representing-my-position sense.
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With Goff in charge you have to ask yourself why would you bother voting for them? They're just National-Lite. it's no wonder they're languishing in the polls.
So true. Literally nearly all of the life-long Lab. voters I know - at least, those with whom I've discussed it - have given up on them for now - and these aren't radical lefties, just normal progressives - and decamped to support for the Greens, for want of a more appropriate home.
I have no connection with or knowledge of the internal workings of the Labour party, but can only assume that there must be massive wranglings over their direction at the moment, even if just on a pragmatic, rather than idealogical, basis.
They really need to realise that National-Lite is like light beer; ie no bloody use to either those who want the real thing or those who specifically don't.
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@ Danielle,
O/T, but this new box set may be of interest:
Dolly Parton's story is mighty but it's never properly been told on record until this 2009 Legacy box set. Spanning 99 tracks over four discs, beginning with the early-'60s demo "Gonna Hurry (As Slow as I Can)" and running until the end of her stay with Columbia in the early '90s, Dolly may miss her bluegrass comeback of the new millennium but this is the only gap in the narrative, and it's not greatly missed, because this captures her prime.
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Aren't they mainly interested because of his previous incarnation as "perk-buster"?
And his disobeyance of the prime minister's directive.
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Good luck, DC. Should you start getting chest pains, please stop.