June 13, 2002 | Read Time: 2 minutes
A law professor has filed a court motion challenging a longstanding tax law that allows ministers and other religious leaders to receive an income-tax deduction on money they receive from their employers to pay for housing.
Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, says the so-called parsonage exemption violates the constitutional principle that government should not advance or inhibit a religion.
By allowing members of the clergy, but not other taxpayers, to receive tax-free housing income, the government is showing “blatant favoritism” for religion, he argues.
The value of housing that a church provides its minister has been exempted from taxes since 1921 under the parsonage exemption. The exemption was broadened in 1954 to include cash that ministers receive from their churches to pay for their own housing.
Mr. Chemerinsky has filed a motion challenging the constitutionality of the exemption, an unwelcome surprise to many religious groups that thought the issue was laid to rest by passage of a new federal law that says a minister’s housing deduction should be limited to the fair rental value of his or her home (The Chronicle, May 30).
The issue arose in a dispute between the Internal Revenue Service and a California minister over the housing allowance the minister had claimed as a deduction.
While the IRS and the minister differed over how much and what type of housing expenses the minister could deduct, neither side argued that the allowance was unconstitutional.
But after the Tax Court ruled in the minister’s favor two years ago (Richard D. Warren and Elizabeth K. Warren v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 114 T.C. 23), the case moved to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeals court has asked the parties involved in the case to offer their comments on whether the allowance is constitutional. It also asked Mr. Chemerinsky to give his opinion on the issue as a legal expert.
The IRS and the minister recently asked the appeals court to dismiss the case, saying the new federal law has resolved the matter of the size of the housing deduction that can be claimed by religious leaders.
But Mr. Chemerinsky has argued to have the case continue, saying that as a taxpayer he has an interest in the constitutional question and wants the court to rule on the matter. The Justice Department, the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs, the Church Alliance, and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty have filed briefs arguing that the exemption is constitutional.
