Why is Scientology Tax-Exempt?

Jamie Kirchick offers a vigorous defense of Germany's hard-line against Scientology. Along the way, Kirchick reminds us how wacky it was of the IRS to reverse years of precedent and grant Scientology recognition as a church. Whatever else it is, Scientology is a profit-seeking enterprise, a fact not altered because its profits derive from telling fabulous fictions.

In 1967, the IRS revoked the Church’s tax-exempt status, a decision reasserted by each and every American court to which the Church brought challenges over a subsequent 25-year-period. A 1984 U.S. Tax Court ruling, for instance, found that the Church “made a business out of selling religion” and that Hubbard and his family had diverted millions of dollars to their personal accounts. The Los Angeles Superior Court, meanwhile, deemed Hubbard “a pathological liar” driven by “egotism, greed, avarice, lust for power and vindictiveness and aggressiveness against persons perceived by him to be disloyal or hostile.”