HARARE, Zimbabwe — In November, Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube announced that starting this month, churches in the country would be expected to pay taxes. The announcement caused apprehension among religious leaders, prompting the country’s tax agency, the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority, to clarify that the new tax would apply only to churches’ trading income, not tithes and offerings.

“Income derived from trade activities is subject to income tax,” ZIMRA said in a notice. “Examples of taxable income include, but are not limited to, proceeds from the sale of church literature, books, or music; revenue from the sale of church-branded merchandise (e.g., apparel, anointing oils, artifacts, etc.); and income from the sale of meals, clothing, or similar items.”

Until now, churches in Zimbabwe had largely been exempt from all forms of taxation, but as the cash-strapped government of President Emmerson Mnangagwa has struggled to meet its financial obligations, it has decided to widen the tax net to include places of worship.

Zimbabwe Council of Churches President Bishop Ignatius Makumbe argued that instead of focusing on taxes as its main revenue source, the government must come up with alternative revenue streams.

“We advised the government as churches that you will never get enough revenue by focusing solely on taxes,” he said. “We have minerals; why are we not mining as a government? We can sell minerals and relieve people of taxes. I think we are our own enemies because we think taxes are better than our minerals.”

Just as in other parts of the African continent, the arrival of neo-Pentecostalism in Zimbabwe — with its emphasis on money and material possessions — has resulted in the emergence of a new brand of churches that are run along business lines, raising concerns from traditional churches that feel unfairly painted with the same brush.

“You really can’t honestly fault the government for seeing churches as businesses that should be taxed because that is what most of them are now,” a retired Catholic priest, who did not want to be identified, told Religion Unplugged. “Money is at the heart of most of these new churches.”

Continent-wide trend

This trend toward taxing religious institutions across Africa has brought to the fore an emotive debate. Those who insist that the status quo should stand highlight that most mainline churches have traditionally carried a disproportionate burden of what ideally should be the responsibilities of national governments in areas such as education, health, food aid and other relief services in times of crises.

They usually cite studies done elsewhere that have shown that societies actually benefit more from just the presence of religious institutions than they lose in foregone taxes. One such study in Canada showed that the socioeconomic or “Halo Effect” of congregations outweighs the benefits of government taxation by more than 10 times.

Churches are generally exempt from taxation in most African countries, but this appears to be changing as the basis for this exemption is increasingly being questioned.

In Rwanda, after the government of strongman Paul Kagame shut down more than 9,000 places of worship last year, the Rwanda Governance Board announced that it was drafting a bill to tax churches and mosques, following Kagame’s call to regulate “nonsense” in religious organizations.

“These unscrupulous people who use religion and churches to manipulate and fleece people of their money and other things will force us to introduce a tax so churches pay tax on the money they get from people,” he said.

In Kenya, moves by the country’s revenue authority to collect taxes from churches were declared illegal by the courts in 2022. However, a petition is currently before the country’s courts by one Kenyan, Magare Gikenyi — a prominent medical doctor — seeking to have the law that exempts religious institutions from sharing the country’s tax burden declared discriminatory and, therefore, unconstitutional.

“Tithes, offerings, donations, and any other person or entity exempted from taxation should be subjected to the same because Article 201 of the Constitution does not anticipate discrimination,” Gikenyi said.

He argued that the discrimination of not sharing the tax burden with everyone is increasing the burden on taxpayers in the East African country.

In Uganda, there has also been a tussle between the tax man and churches after the government issued a directive that all new or modern churches should be registered separately as nongovernmental organizations for taxation purposes. This prompted some of the churches to seek protection from President Yoweri Museveni.

“The issue of periodic registration of new churches as NGOs — we will resolve it,” Museveni declared. “A church is a church, not an NGO.”

In Nigeria, the continent’s most populous country, which is nearly equally divided between Christian and Muslim populations, all previous efforts to change the tax-free status of religious institutions have failed. In Ghana, although churches are not taxed, debate is currently raging on the matter, with calls for the exemption to be lifted.

Pentecostal habits undermine exemption argument

In Africa, the advent of trendy Pentecostal churches has only served to weaken the original arguments in favor of religious tax exemptions.

“Have you seen them? They feed people snakes and grass, and they walk on people, they do all kinds of crazy things in the name of God, hayi khona (it shouldn’t be),” said the late Tito Mboweni, former South African finance minister, as he announced plans to tax churches in the country. “And then you see them displaying wealth; the big cars, the doors that open on both sides, and all kinds of things — and they are not paying tax, these fellows. Some of them have private jets, and so on — all in the name of God.”

He revealed that he had mandated the government’s tax experts to work on tightening up the country’s laws governing the tax affairs of religious public-benefit organizations or churches.

The South African Local Government Association, which represents the 257 local authorities in South Africa — Africa’s biggest economy — feels its membership is losing out on missed revenue that it is not collecting from religious organizations in the country and has called for authorities to open a national debate on the exemption law citing dramatically changed circumstances. This call for a national debate on the exemption has been gaining traction.

“It is true that they (churches) have taken up some of the responsibilities that belong to the state,” journalist Philani Makhanya wrote. “Without churches, society would easily descend into chaos, so the importance of their role in society cannot be overlooked. However, it is also true that churches have become more prosperous in recent years, with some controlling massive budgets. The flashy lifestyles of church leaders, evident in the cars they drive and the multi-million-dollar mansions they live in, is proof enough that the debate about churches paying taxes is not really misplaced.”

These sentiments are widely shared by many frustrated African finance ministers struggling with budgetary constraints when they see the beneficiaries of tax exemption laws flaunting their wealth in a sea of poverty.

‘Give to Caesar’

Primus Tazanu, from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Buea in Cameroon, told Religion Unplugged there is nothing amiss with moves by the government of Zimbabwe and others on the continent to seek to collect taxes from places of worship.

“Churches are businesses that use Jesus’ name to embellish their brand,” he said. “Despite the palliative aura that his name draws, Jesus would never approve at all of churches being exempt from paying taxes. Was he not the one who said people should give to Caesar what belonged to Caesar? That was a commanding political statement acknowledging the authority of the Roman Empire over religious institutions at that time. It is thus not sinful to ask churches to pay taxes because Jesus would never have failed to contribute financially to the society in which he lived.”

Tazanu, who is also a senior guest researcher at the University of Copenhagen’s Center of African Studies, said the church is a religious organization formed by humans to serve the interests of humans here on earth.

“Whether or not it has anything to do with God is debatable, but we can attest that churches serve this-worldly material and nonmaterial expectations of humans,” he added. “Does it not sound improper that churches do not (want to) pay taxes yet they benefit from this-worldly facilities and infrastructure that use taxpayers’ money?”

He acknowledged the challenges that come with collecting these taxes.

“Considering the substantial pushback from the religious institutions — that is, their unwillingness to pay taxes — we see that they are reluctant to give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, contrary to Jesus. In many cases, we witness that churches are not exceptionally upright in terms of morals,” Tazanu said. “These ‘normal’ human beings should pay taxes.”

Cyril Zenda is a Christian and an African journalist and writer based in Harare, Zimbabwe.