There seem to be a couple myths on both sides of the ongoing (revived) controversy over taxation of clergy members. And at the heart of the debates is an anti-religious atmosphere gripping today’s Korean society. Financial authorities started the taxation move out of inaccurate observations of the religious community and are now finding dubious excuses to explain their withdrawal.

Many advocates of income tax collection from Christian ministers and Buddhist priests suppose that churches and temples are a major area of the hidden economy where believers’ offerings are lavishly spent on building luxurious edifices and supporting extravagant lives. They also assume that religious people in general are against any taxation schemes directed at their clerics.

Meanwhile, Christian activists who oppose the income tax levy claim that payments to church pastors are subsidies for their evangelical services and are not taxable “wages” for their work. And some argue that donations to churches are all made after tax, hence collecting tax from their payments is tantamount to double taxation. As an insider of the Christian community, I cannot approve of these arguments.

I am an elder at Somang Church, a “large” Presbyterian institution in Gangnam, southern Seoul, founded 35 years ago. My church has about 100 employees, including the pastor and about 20 assistant pastors. Others are full-time and part-time “evangelists (pastor trainees)” who teach Sunday school children, broadcasting and computer technicians, janitors, cleaners, kitchen workers, a librarian and a nutritionist, etc. They all pay income tax without exception.

Somang Church is known to have a congregation of about 50,000, though the real size may be smaller, as churches do not usually count members who leave, as they could return some time. Churches tend not to open their financial status to outsiders but it is not a secret. Somang Church has an annual budget of approximately 35 billion won, with nearly half from tithes, and the head pastor is paid about 100 million won a year before tax.

For personal reasons, I have recently been attending a small church near my home. Hyundai Presbyterian Church in Gangnam has about 150 registered believers, whose offerings can barely sustain its operations, financing missionary and charity activities. Its Sunday pamphlet specifies the amount given in offerings during the previous week. Hyundai Church could be classified as “better than average” as more than 70 percent of Korean Protestant churches are below the self-sufficiency level.

The general public perception of Korean churches is formulated by what the mass media has reported about large, rich churches. It scarcely includes the dire financial situations of the majority of churches and their clergies, whose income hardly reaches the tax exemption point. I wonder if the officials at the Strategy and Finance Ministry had on their minds pastors preaching before tens of thousands of people in a huge chapel and driving in sleek foreign cars, or Buddhist monks playing poker in a motel room, when they were planning the tax law amendment.

Strategy and Finance Minister Bahk Jae-wan occasionally hinted last year that his ministry would consider revising the enforcement decree on the Income Tax Law not to recognize exception for “religious professionals” from the principle of universal taxation. A study was under way to rewrite Article 38 of the presidential decree to include income from religious activities in the category of “earned income” subject to taxation. Naturally objections were raised from religious organizations, and NGOs joined in the debate both for and against.

There were three “consultation” sessions between the finance authorities and representatives of religious organizations. Given the great diversity of interest groups in the Christian and Buddhist societies, the three brief sessions could hardly prove that the authorities made sufficient efforts to reach a consensus. Last week, ministry officials said that they would rather pass on the clergies’ taxation question to the next administration, giving no clear reason.

An official was quoted as saying that “a maximum of 300 billion won” could be collected annually from churches and temples, which hardly justifies the trouble of overcoming opposition from religious circles. Others indicated that the Blue House was behind the suspension of the taxation drive. They did not try too anxiously to deny speculation that President Lee Myung-bak, a Christian elder, might be among the most vocal objectors.

Lee may not wish to be remembered as the president who forced pastors to pay income tax but I don’t think that he particularly opposes the taxation move. Christians, at least most of those whom I meet, do not want a totally tax-free church. Right-minded pastors believe that they should pay tax to the state in return for what the state does for them, and they do pay taxes as long as they can afford to. It does not matter whether their salaries are considered payments for their labor or the congregation’s token of appreciation for their guidance in prayers and worship services in accordance with biblical traditions.

For a long time in the past, the authorities did not check the incomes of clergies, nor did they levy tax on them. When churches resisted the worsening dictatorship in the 1960s and the ‘70s, government authorities used the tax exemption practice as leverage to induce conciliation. In defiance of such political tricks, pastors began voluntarily paying income taxes. The Bishops Conference of Korea announced the Korean Catholic Church’s decision to pay income tax for priests in 1994.

There are at least 19 tax law provisions excluding assets of religious institutions from taxable objects, but the Income Tax Law does not specify exemption for the clergy. All Koreans who earn more than the exemption level should pay taxes just as all healthy Korean males should serve in the armed forces.

Bureaucrats initiated clergy members’ taxation, presumably pushed by anti-religious sentiments in some quarters of society, and then are stepping back in the face of repercussions from some Christian and Buddhist circles. Implicitly passing the buck to a Christian president is clumsy maneuvering to conceal yet another monumental case of bureaucratic misadventure at the close of a presidential term. 

By Kim Myong-sik

Kim Myong-sik is a former editorial writer of The Korea Herald. ― Ed.