May 2, 2010 | Read Time: 1 minute
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco has gone to court to fight the conclusion by the city of San Francisco that the archdiocese owes a one-time local “transfer tax” of $14.4-million on property whose ownership rights are being moved between different nonprofit organizations.
The archdiocese filed its lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court after a city appeals board affirmed a decision by the city tax assessor.
The archdiocese has said it began in 2007 to simplify its structure, clarify the relationships in its family of nonprofit corporations in accordance with church law, and combine parish and school property in a new nonprofit organization.
In a statement, the archdiocese said the city tax violates the church’s state and federal constitutional rights “to choose and change those civil-law corporate forms that best accommodate its religious structure and needs.” The assessor has said the archdiocese owes the tax because it had made a substantial change in its organization that, under the law, must be taxed.
