The passage of a formal religious organization act (宗教團體法) is necessary to bring transparency to religious groups’ finances, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday.
“A responsible organization must have knowledge of the general status of religious groups’ finances,” Civil Affairs Department Deputy Director Luo Rui-ching (羅瑞卿) said.
“Not to manage them, but to provide a guarantee for citizens,” he added.
“People who make donations should have a right to check [the results of their donations],” he added.
The proposed legislation was criticized last week by the Taiwan Buddhist Association and the Chinese Buddhist Bhikkhuni Association on the grounds that it would interfere with religious freedom by regulating donations to religious organizations.
Luo said that temples for the nation’s traditional religions, such as Buddhism, are currently governed by the Act of Supervising Temples (監督寺廟條例), which does not require them to report financial information to the government.
That law had run into legal trouble for treating temples differently from the mosques and churches of “foreign” religions, such as Christianity and Islam, which are required to register legal personages and report their finances to the government, she said.
While the proposed legislation does not explicitly require temples and other organizations to register a legal personage and report finances, it does encourage them to do so by subjecting those who do not make the switch to capital gain taxes on the land they own, she said.
Temples which register legal personages would also be allowed to legally own agriculturally zoned land for the first time, rather than having to register it under the name of temple officials, she added.
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