Texas televangelist Kenneth Copeland avoids about US$150,000 a year in property tax on his US$7 million, 18,000-square-foot lakeside mansion because it is classed as a church parsonage, prompting a county appraiser to call it out of place.

Documents seen by the Sunday Gleaner showed Pathways leader Kevin Smith paying for at least five properties, owing $386,790 in land tax and leaving the purchase of his church’s land unfinished, while members paid fees and building fund levies.

Official records showed 431 Jamaican churches registered as charities held nearly $17 billion in assets in 2021, averaging about $39.3 million each, while benefiting from property tax and income tax exemptions, the Observer reported.

A Virginia church denied a tax exemption for the house where its unordained campus ministers live has petitioned the US Supreme Court, arguing the city had no right to decide who counts as a minister.

Mandeville Mayor Donovan Mitchell told the Manchester Municipal Corporation that church people must pay their property tax just as they pay offering, saying most arrears are owed by people with money and businesses, not the poor.

An Oklahoma investigation found few limits on religious property tax exemptions, with one small church holding more than 460 mostly tax-exempt acres and a $1.7 million mansion, and rules varying county by county.

The European Court of Justice ordered Italy to recover unpaid ICI property tax from Church bodies, a sum one politician put at at least four billion euros, after a long fight led by a small Rome Montessori school.

After church leaders warned that paying property tax would force them to cut community services, Local Government Minister Desmond McKenzie said in February 2017 that churches’ exemption under the Property Tax Act would not change.

A landmark performance audit of Tax Administration Jamaica has exposed a property tax system in deep structural trouble — not because Jamaicans lack the capacity to pay, but because the agency tasked with collecting taxes lacks the tools, procedures

A Bermuda government listing showed 134 churches and rectories paying no land tax, sparking debate over whether churches should help cut public debt. Church leaders defended the exemption, while officials said some parsonage exemptions may need revisiting.