The Keene Sentinel speculates about the upcoming tax assessment board decision on the Shire Free Church‘s tax exempt status for the Keene parsonage:
Property taxes are a drag, especially here in the Granite State, where, thanks to the “New Hampshire advantage,” they pretty much pay for every aspect of state and local government and the quality of the services we receive are proportional to the value of our community’s real estate and not an individual’s ability to pay.
So, wouldn’t it be nice to simply wish them away, to click the heels of your ruby red shoes and chant: “There’s no tax on home; there’s no tax on home,” and have it become reality?
We’ll soon find out, thanks to the organizers of the Shire Free Church, otherwise known as the Free Keene activists best-known for their efforts to fill expired parking meters, the subsequent court case stemming from their harassment of city parking enforcement employees, their attempts to bait local and state police by pretending to break local drug and alcohol laws, and their efforts to convince others to mess with the courts and the government.The leaders of that group have applied for tax-exempt status, claiming their house at 73-75 Leverett St. in Keene, which has for several years served as a base for libertarian Internet broadcasting and their local political operations, is now a parsonage.
The legal maneuver behind that claim is that Ian Freeman, formerly Ian Bernard, sold the house to the recently incorporated “church” earlier this year.
Freeman told The Sentinel last month “It gives them a place to go where they can find people who share their beliefs, even if they don’t share theological beliefs.” That sounds more like a club than a religion, but the courts have given great leeway to religious claims in the past.
According to its website, “The Shire Free Church is an interfaith, diverse group of people who may not share identical theological beliefs. As a member in or minister of the Shire Free Church, you are a sovereign individual and may be the faith of your choice whether it be Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Daoist, Jewish, Quaker, etc, or following your inner light. Monotheists, polytheists, pantheists, panentheists, and atheists are all welcome, as long as you are peaceful.”
The stated mission of the group is: “Peace. Love. Liberty.”
As laudable as these tenets are, simply claiming a religious devotion to peace while taking every opportunity to provoke political confrontation doesn’t seem like the way to convince the assessors — or, likely, the courts, eventually — of the validity of your self-proclaimed system of beliefs, nor does calling a political movement one of faith make it so.
But this case won’t likely be decided on the constitutional grounds of what constitutes a religion. The U.S. Supreme Court has made clear in past cases that religion is a personal choice, and if the Shire-ites can convince the powers that be of their true faith, they may gain some of the benefits of that status.
But that may not include tax-exempt status. We expect the city to turn down the claim on the “parsonage” at Leverett and River streets, because state law governs such exemptions, and it’s pretty clear on the need for such an exemption applying only to established, widely recognized faiths.
Chapter 72:23 of N.H. law provides for property tax exemptions on a religious basis for the following:
“Houses of public worship, parish houses, church parsonages occupied by their pastors, convents, monasteries, … used and occupied directly for religious training or for other religious purposes by any regularly recognized and constituted denomination, creed or sect, organized, incorporated or legally doing business in this state ….”
Given the Free Keeners’ description of their beliefs and the fact they’ve existed for such a short time, it might prove difficult to meet that “regularly recognized and constituted denomination” definition.
Further, while City Assessor Dan Langille maintains each exemption request is dealt with individually based on its merits, it seems hard to fathom the board would agree this meets its criteria. To do so would simply allow anyone with a sincere-sounding spiel to bypass paying property taxes by calling their home a chapel or parsonage.
And if enough people went that route, the state and local governments might even be forced to reconsider its overreliance on property taxes in the face of a drastic loss of revenue and replace it with others, such as an income tax. While we’ve long advocated for a more sensible state tax structure — and feel it would better be achieved through the existing political system — who knew that was also a goal of the Free Keeners?
