How TV mega "churches" are raking in tax-free profits and DC doesn't seem to care

http://www.npr.org/2014/04/01/282496855/can-a-television-network-be-a-church-the-irs-says-yes

This is not an old story (remember the Jim and Tammy Baker?), but the scale has grown (money and gov't incompetence). Televangelists now have nearly billion-dollar empires, that are conveniently mostly tax-free as a "religious nonprofit". They also enjoy stronger privacy status (financial and otherwise). Even the huge luxury compounds that these orgs own don't have to pay property tax because they are classified as parsonages (had to wiki this one: a church-owned abode for the clergy to live in).

Since 2009, the IRS can no longer audit churches without the approval of a top official at Treasury (and who can be bothered to sign off for that?). Supposedly an org must meet the IRS' 14-point checklist to be called a church, but few of these "TV ministries" do. Too bad no one is checking but folks like NPR apparently.

And what do these churches do with their huge rakes? Private jets, Bentleys, publishing subsidiaries, and generally Wall St. level compensation for the preachers.  They claim that they route congregation donations to worthy causes, but an investigation of TX-based Daystar Ministries revealed that they only gave 5% of revenue to charity (they claimed it was 30%). In comparison the secular Red Cross is >90% and Catholic Charities USA is 75%. But hey, Daystar sponsored a Christian NASCAR team to the tune of $600K. And remember that the congregation is getting tax breaks as well.

The Senate Finance Cmte. led by C Grassley (R) investigated 6 mega-churches recently. They found evidence of abuse, but didn't take action and more or less dropped the issue (church leaders were threatening to sue over religious persecution). They recommended "self regulation" and Grassley hopes that the problem will "cure itself". I guess there is a lot of gov't paranoia/precedent about interfering in religious matters. Maybe DC has no right to decide what a preacher gets paid, but if the gov't can legally make us fight in a war, spy on us, seize our property, and sentence us to death, I think they can revisit whether they need to at least tax and monitor religious orgs a little more (even tightening up how they define them would make a big impact).