Do churches / wards need business licenses?

[prisonchaplain]

Lake Worth, Florida is now requiring business licenses, and is using secret investigators to check on "underground churches."  http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/03/05/florida-city-wages-soviet-style-crackdown-on-churches/

[Crypto]

Anything that gets more government servants into church the better
lol

I'm generally of the opinion that more regulation is not a good thing.

Edited March 16, 2015 by Crypto

[Dravin]

According the Mayor:

 

First, houses of worship and not-for-profit 501c3 organizations are, and always will, be exempt," Triolo said. "The only item they always have been obligated to ensure is the public safety and compliance of the use and occupancy laws. These issues include proper ingress/egress, fire safety, ADA  and other related items.

 

Unfortunately, our city sustainability department, in an effort to reduce costs and streamline noticing, consolidated multiple forms into one, but left the title of "business license" on top, which was confusing to many. This incident is truly an unfortunate misunderstanding that I hope will be resolved soon.

 

From: http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2015/March/City-Under-Fire-for-Requiring-Church-Business-Licenses/

 

Going to the Lake Worth Municipal website does appear to have it set-up as a dual form, at least it does mention Use & Occupancy ( https://www.lakeworth.org/business/business-tax/ ). That might explain some church seeing the form and complaining but it doesn't really explain the investigation. Even if it was intended to be an investigation into if safety and maximum occupancy requirements were being met the snippets of the report available online don't make it sound like that at all. Which makes it sound like someone or someones decided to do a little axe grinding.

 

As far as the general question instead of the specific incident:

 

I'm comfortable with for profit business ventures of churches requiring a license if a secular one would as well, but I'm not comfortable with requiring some sort of church license (be it a unique to churches license or requiring them to get a business license). I am okay with buildings that hold large regular public to semi-public meetings being required to meet certain safety requirements such as maximum occupancy and sufficient points of egress in case of emergency. That'd be something that applies to the building though not the church itself.

Edited March 16, 2015 by Dravin

[Palerider]

We don't have to in Missouri. Like I say our Government knows best.....:)

[Traveler]

From the what is priestcraft thread, comes the question - How does one decipher the difference between a business and a church?  How about if there is more money needed to run the business of the church than to run their charities?

[Guest]

From the what is priestcraft thread, comes the question - How does one decipher the difference between a business and a church?  How about if there is more money needed to run the business of the church than to run their charities?

Any endeavor that is for the purpose of worshipping some deity and following its tenets is a church regardless of how much money it makes and how much it cost to run it. A church can be a business. They are unrelated. It's the same as asking, what's the difference between a blue shirt and a cotton shirt?

[Blackmarch]

Lake Worth, Florida is now requiring business licenses, and is using secret investigators to check on "underground churches."  http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/03/05/florida-city-wages-soviet-style-crackdown-on-churches/

Oh boy.