Churches should be registered charities to ensure they are held strictly accountable for the funds that they raise and tax exemptions they are subject to.

This is the view of lawyer Mark Diel who has weighed into an ongoing debate over whether churches should retain a predominantly tax-free status.

However, senior statesman and former United Bermuda Party minister Quinton Edness believes that not only should churches remain exempt from paying land tax, they should also be made entirely free from payroll tax and need only be held accountable by their own congregations.

Churches, while not officially regulated, gain their exempt status because of the social role they play in the community. Mr Diel, managing director for law firm Marshall, Diel and Myers, said an appropriate question to be asking in today’s society is: “Why shouldn’t churches be taxed?”

He told The Royal Gazette: “Churches, collectively, are probably the biggest landowners in Bermuda. You have a very large set of organisations who own property but the church isn’t subject to land tax, neither are the places where the ministers live — why is that?

“If you are going to say you run a significant number of social programmes and do good for the congregation and others, then you should be registered as a charity and if you are registered as a charity then you will have certain functions that you have to fulfil. I could sit here and say I donate money to charity, I try to do things for the greater good and so on and on that basis I don’t have to pay land tax — it just doesn’t wash.

“I think there is some argument to say that those of us who are being taxed are shouldering a greater burden of the tax than if, for example, the churches were taxed.

“Their argument is to say we do all this good — if they make contributions to government coffers wouldn’t government have more money for social assistance programmes? In that case you have government who are supposedly accountable for how this money is spent to the taxpayer as opposed to the money not going to government at all and relying on the churches to do the right thing with no regulation whatsoever — that is unacceptable.”

Mr Edness argued regulation from congregants, some of whom perform administrative tasks for the churches, was adequate.

“Churches should not be charged land tax,” he said. “People who say they should don’t realise what churches do for this community. Apart from the spirituality that they bring to us and the righteousness that they bring, they do an awful lot more.

“I know of churches that have programmes for the homeless and I also know churches that take a meal to the elderly every day and they do a great deal of counselling to young people and they are always there to help anybody who simply wants to ask them for help.

“I don’t think that we should try and cause that to be like some sort of a commercial entity by taxing them as we tax other properties.”

Asked whether he was confident all of Bermuda’s churches were doing their fair share in order to earn the breaks they enjoy, Mr Edness added: “I am certain because they have been doing it for many years and it is the congregation that keeps the churches in order.

“They are appointed in the administration of the churches and so forth and these churches serve the community. They will not let them get into anything untoward.

“The relationship has been honoured and I don’t see that changing at all.

“Churches and charities are different — anybody in this country can stand up one day and say they are starting this charity — I started charities for various purposes - you register and you have to be accountable to the Registrar General for your funds and finances and so forth and so it should be.

“When you start a charity you don’t want a person to start a charity to raise funds that aren’t going to be applied to what they say they are going to.

“It doesn’t apply to churches because churches have an innate structure where they have to conform with contributing to society because of the congregation and the long religious background and the directions they get from the Bible and so forth.”

The Royal Gazette asked the Bermuda Government whether it would consider charging further taxes to churches in the future and whether it thought churches should be subject to regulation but did not receive a response by press time.