>5 monasteries said that they evaluated the value of their properties at around 20b of today's euros (this is just for 5 monasteries). You can imagine how taxing the church would pay off a good chunk of the debt

So are you proposing that they instigate a one-off property tax on everyone in Greece or just on the monasteries. The reason that 5 monasteries have so much valuable land is not necessarily that they are rich (the meals described in the article and lifestyle aren't exactly lavish either) but because they own large areas of land which when they adopted them 100s of years ago were probably unwanted, but now (speculating) are probably places where holiday resorts would be built.

Demanding a piece of a valuation of the properties would I imagine mean many such properties would be sold off and a great swathe of Greek heritage from the last millenium or so would then be following all the unpaid taxes and disappearing.

Perhaps you could explain further how you propose to get cash out of monastic property?

The "value" of the monasteries also seems like it requires assumptions about what would be permitted. I imagine Mount Athos, for example, could be quite valuable as a tourist and resort destination--- could make some nice boutique hotels out of those historic monasteries. But since secular development has been banned on the peninsula for centuries, I can't imagine that actually happening. If we assume that Mouth Athos will stay off-limits to secular development, and assume that the removal/sale of historic items from the monasteries wouldn't be permitted, the value of their land and holdings (e.g. manuscripts) is much lower, because it isn't commercially exploitable.

Now shell companies owned by the church engaged in normal for-profit business, those seem pretty reasonable to tax.

He's ignorant? Finish reading the paragraph!

That's not what I said. I said they should tax the church's income.

To be fair, you were using the net worth of the church as a supporting argument for taxing its income, and the reply pointed out that much of their net worth is extraordinarly illiquid and uncorrelated with their income.

Limos and $30K hats certainly don't sound like priceless historic artifacts, though.

It was actually a poor segue, I meant for the two points to be unrelated, I googled a bit and found the link to the article and thought I'd posted it, as it shows that the church's argument that they're poor is false. I should have better clarified the wording, really...

Bear in mind that they rent much of the property to others and generate quite a bit of income that way. It's not just monasteries, they own whole blocks of buildings in Athens, Thessaloniki and other cities (I have no citation for that, sadly).

> The value of the entire Greek church is in the billions of euros, and nothing is taxed.

You know that NGOs are also not taxed?

I personally find a lot of people who are against religion who wants churches taxed. The only reason is that they have an axe to grind.

Churches (and NGOs) are by definition not wealth creators. A church elder praying or a nun giving food to the poor does not create wealth (but fulfills a whole different social function).

>Meanwhile, the high priests wear 30k euro hats and ride around in limousines.

Remember this next time you see some big executive talking about how he needs tax cuts because he can't afford to hire employees. In other words, no matter how much someone makes, it never occurs to them that if they would make their insane excess a little less they could afford it.

I worked in investment banking for 5 years and I never saw anyone wearing a EUR 30k hat!

Hell, Brioni or Kiton suits only come in at EUR 20k...

Have you never heard an executive complain about workers being expensive while being compensated several million per year?

If you're enough of a bigshot in a company large enough to pay you that kind of money, then yes, workers are expensive. Hundreds of workers are pricier than one executive.

Really? 300 workers making $30k/year is less than $10 million.

Well, the workers are being paid less than $10 million. But if they receive any sort of benefits then their cost to the employer goes up quite a bit. And you also have to factor in payroll taxes. The cost of a worker is not just his/her salary.

True. And that goes for the executives as well, more so in fact (e.g. better health care plans and so on).