Charity begins at home

All manner of organisations enjoy a tax-exempt status on their incomes, including churches. The case for churches not paying income tax is becoming more and more untenable as we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century. In days gone past, the church was the main agency in not just offering spiritual and moral guidance, but addressing the woes of widows and orphans. I remember as a child that my church, the African Inland Church in Mukaa, took in children who had been born out of wedlock or whose parents had passed away and had no other living relatives. It was my church that took it upon itself to ensure that widows, the old and the infirm were taken care off in their times of need. This is not the situation today.

When we look at the new evangelical and Pentecostal outfits today, what is striking is the apparent lack of a corporate social responsibility, if you will, when it comes to their responsibilities to their congregations or the less fortunate in the communities where they are located. Many of us remember the rhetoric that the church deployed during the Referendum Campaign, when many church leaders declared that the would deploy the considerable resources that had been given by their congregants to fight the Proposed Constitution. At that time, there was a muted response that if the church decided to use the offertory for the purposes of engaging in a political campaign, then it would be just that the church started considering the question of paying income tax on its rather considerable income. This debate went nowhere and it is high time we started questioning the wisdom of allowing a religious group that has refused to abide with its social contract to provide not just spiritual but material solace to its more vulnerable members.

It is common these days to see churches running training colleges, primary and secondary schools, and nurseries and kindergartens, frequently for profit. The incomes derived from these institutions should be deployed for the welfare of the communities that live around these churches. But this is not so. Instead, it is common to see church leaders swanning around in expensive four-wheel drive vehicles and living in the choicest neighbourhoods whole many members of their congregations are incapable of paying for their basic necessities. We may acknowledge that churches still come to the aid of bereaved members of their congregations, but this is usually in the form of organising harambees and other fund-raising events, as well as organising prayer sessions and hospital visits for the afflicted. But, in material terms, the church keeps all of its funds, usually for the comfort of its leadership. This must end.

Without doubt, some of the more established churches, like the Seventh day Adventists, the Roman Catholics, the Anglicans and the AIC still maintain an expensive social system that is of immense benefit for the community. But it is the sight of the evangelicals and the Pentecostals running multi-million shilling empires without a thought as to the material well-being of their communities that galls. Sometimes it is not clear whether these corporate empires are creatures of these churches or the personal property of the Mchungaji or Kasisi. It is all well and good that the Constitution has finally outlawed the tax-exempt status of all state officers,while allowing for the possibility of tax-exemptions for charitable bodies. It is now up to the Kenya Revenue Authority to take a cold hard look at the operations of all churches to ensure that their tax-exempt status is not abused. If the churches deploy their considerable income to the running of community dispensaries, orphanages or to tend to the material needs of widows, the old and the infirm, then they can retain their tax-exemptions. However, if the church exists solely for the aggrandizement of the church leadership, their tax exemptions must be revoked forthwith.