Why does a university own a shopping mall?

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/09/jerry-falwell-liberty-university-loans-227914

Quote :

Liberty University has transformed under Jerry Falwell Jr.’s leadership. When he took over as president in 2007, the school, which is a nonprofit, had listed assets of just over $259 million on its then most recent IRS Form 990; in its filing for the fiscal year ending in June 2017, its assets surpassed $2.5 billion. That number is now more than $3 billion, according to public statements Falwell made in 2018.

It's time somebody put a stop to phony religions getting "non-profit" status. There ought to be -- in fact I think there ARE -- certain requirements for non-profit status and they need to be enforced.

I think you might be surprised at how few restrictions there are on "non-profit" status. I read a lengthy article about it some time back and was amazed at how much profit a non-profit can make.

They should just remove the non-profit status for churches and let them pay taxes as they should. All they really are are social clubs and pedophile clubs. Undeserving of tax breaks.

Okay. The whole rationale for not taxing houses of worship was to prevent entanglement of church-and-state, where a government makes money off licensing a religion.

I get that.

But something needs to change, because unscrupulous religion-owners are using this loophole for amassing vast sums of wealth. How about taxing all religious organizations at a fairly high rate, say 30%, but having all those tax revenues go to the local communities they serve in the form of a "general welfare fund" to feed the hungry, clothe the nekkid and house the homeless. If a church is a single location, its "tithes" go the city or county where it's located. If it's a chain, the local money goes to the communities but the home office pays the state where it's headquartered. If it's a national or an international, the funds go to the state or federal government HUD dept.

Non-profit management should be forbidden from taking any more money out of the corporation than, say, three-times what the lowest-paid employee makes.

The rest of the funds must be returned to the shareholders, like non-profit credit unions have to do. Churches should be run EXACTLY like credit unions, with boards of directors elected from the shareholders to serve terms with strict term limits. BOD choses the CEO and CFO. Shareholder revolts will cause a CEO to lose his or her position.