HoreTore - an innocent victim of religious persecution. Call amnesty now!!

[Tellos Athenaios]

No. I still do not have to teach them "in a more persistant fashion", you're confusing that with something else, which is having rules for how we behave at school. At school, everyone is required to follow the rules of the school, and in the classroom, I am 100% in charge and the rules I make are the rules that apply(actually I make them together with the students, but that's another discussion). How they feel they can behave, how their parents want them to behave, how they feel they should behave in life elsewhere, none of that is any of my concern. I care about what happens inside my classroom, and inside my classroom no other rules apply. Do I care whether they follow my rules in other parts of their lives? Nope, don't care at all. All I care about is when they're in my custody, they live by my rules.

I'm fairly confident you require some written work to be handed in at some times, or require some sort of group assignments where students don't get the option of doing stuff on their own but have to work with someone else too. But I doubt you do either just because you feel like it.

How can they ever be treated as a charity? If Shell opens up a division that runs a free hospital in Africa or whatever, will that excempt them from taxation?

Not quite. But if local dance troupes/museums can qualify why not a church?

[HoreTore]

I'm fairly confident you require some written work to be handed in at some times, or require some sort of group assignments where students don't get the option of doing stuff on their own but have to work with someone else too. But I doubt you do either just because you feel like it.

......I don't understand what you're getting at....

Of course my students work in groups, they do that all the time, and the rules they live by then are the same as any other time they are at school: my rules. But whether they will follow those rules at other times in their lives are completely irrelevant to me, that's their parents job.

Not quite. But if local dance troupes/museums can qualify why not a church?

I see no reason why a "local dance troupe" should ever qualify, and at least here they don't. Culture is taxed same as everything else. It's just the religious ones who get away.

A church usually does some charity as well, but why they shouldn't have to pay taxes on the funds they use on upkeep of their buildings, for example, because they hand out some food to the poor simply doesn't make sense.

Not any more sense than letting Shell off the hook if they too hand out some food to the poor.

[miotas]

A church usually does some charity as well, but why they shouldn't have to pay taxes on the funds they use on upkeep of their buildings, for example, because they hand out some food to the poor simply doesn't make sense.

Not any more sense than letting Shell off the hook if they too hand out some food to the poor.

I also think that religions should be able to be tax exempt only if they operate as a charity, and if it was deemed that they were operating as a charity then it would make sense to include the building upkeep since that is where they operate their charity from. To use your Shell example it would be more like them opening up their headquarters and every shop they own to be used as hospitals.