Good morning your honors, Ladies and Gentlemen.

The topic
for our debate is to let it be resolved that the church property
should not be exempted from taxation.
We the affirmative side strongly believe that this statement is
true. We define church property as property or INCOME owned by
a church. Ladies and gentlemen, taxes are defined as the amount
of money that we have to pay to the government so that it can pay
for public services such as roads, schools and the like.When a
person or company is taxed, they have to pay a part of their
income or profits to the government.
Why is it necessary for the church property to be taxed?
First point that Ill be discussing is the power of taxation. One
of the inherent powers of the state is the power of taxation. It is the
power to impose and collect taxes and charges on individuals,
goods, services, and other to support the operation of government.
Taxation of church property is necessary because the
foundation for their tax exemption were obsolete and no longer
applies. Historically, the primary reason that churches have not
been taxed is because they have been interpreted from a legal
standpoint to be non-profit.
The transactions made by churches and the resources that
they consume nowadays are rightfully taxable. Previously,
governments and laws assumed that religion would not be used for
profit. Today, however, the use for profit can and should be
interpreted in relevant ways. The non-profit status of churches
should not simply be assumed, because they used to be non-profit
in the past. Governments should ascertain if a church truly
operates charitably and tax the elements that rightfully must
contribute to society.
Second, according to Section 28 (3) of Article VI of the
Philippine Constitution that real properties of religious and
charitable institutions not actually, directly, and exclusively used for
religious, charitable, or educational purposes shall be subject to
the real property tax. Convents, for instance, are subject to
property tax. School buildings with a dual purpose- as residence
for priests/nuns and as school, since this is no longer exclusive
use should also be taxed.If real property is used for one or more
commercial purposes, it is not exclusively used for the exempted
purposes but is subject to taxation.
 As in the case of Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, wherein he
pointed out that the government should impose income tax on
schools run by religious organizations. He further states that these
schools, though registered as non-stock, non-profit always
implement tuition increases which they came up with an idea that
these are profitable, expanding and that should be taxed.
According to Dominguez, they engage in activities that are
not connected to their main purpose and Supreme Court decided
to tax them. He added that they have revenue from commercial
activities like rental of assets and properties and those are taxable.
Third and the last point Ill be dealing with was the provision
stated in Section 30 of the Tax Code wherein income from
properties and activities conducted by non-stock and non-profit
organizations for profit is subject to income tax. Moreover, it is also
stated in Article III, Section 5 that our constitution does not
prohibit imposing a tax on the sale of religious materials by a
religious organization. This means that income earned by the
church from the sale or lease of its real property is actually subject
to tax. In addition to that, income derived from any of their
properties, or from any of their activities conducted for profit
regardless of the disposition made of such income, shall be
subject also to Philippine income tax.
This was supported by the recent case filed by the Cebu City
government against Perpetual Succour Hospital which is run by
religious nuns.The BIR imposed the tax when it found out that
almost P11 million income of the hospital was turned over to
Sisters of St. Paul of Chartres, the congregation that operates the
hospital. It added that if a charitable institution conducts any
activity for profit, such activity is not tax exempt under the Tax
Code.The court, however, reduced the deficiency tax assessment
to only P8.1 million to exclude interest and penalty, stressing that
the petitioner honestly believed in good faith that it was not tax
liable.