Washington Post conservative columnist Henry Olsen throws a fit:
"President Biden and congressional Democrats seem determined to raise taxes on the rich…. If they’re really serious about this, there’s one sector of American wealth that is undertaxed even by today’s standards: universities....
"The amount of wealth held by major colleges … is astounding."
Nearly all conservatives seem to loathe universities these days. There one will find all manner of wicked, humanist propaganda invading the minds of our impressionable young 'uns. The very least we should do is tax these institutions of iniquity at the current capital gains rate of 20 percent, says Mr. Olsen.
But Henry, what of their doctrinal antipodes? — organized religions. He scowls that "rich universities … pay a mere 1.4 percent in federal taxes on their net investment income." Well, Henry, religious institutions pay zero percent. On a bundle.
In its "most conservative estimate," a 2016 study published by the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion found that "faith-based organizations [took in] more than the global annual revenues of tech giants Apple and Microsoft combined." A year later, the World Economic Forum reported that, in the aggregate, religions' income was "also more than 50% larger than the global annual revenues of America’s six largest oil and gas companies."
There are rich veins of gold in John Winthrop's 1630 "city upon a hill." They'll never be extracted, of course — the shrill cris de coeur from the faithful would be deafening — even though taxing religion in no way infringes on the First Amendment's dictate that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
In fact, Olsen's conclusion seems an endorsement of taxing religion: "Wealth is wealth, and massive accumulations of it should be taxed regardless of the source if the federal government needs the money." Especially after 40 years of conservatives' impoverishment of the federal government, it does need the money.