A Bad Tax Law Puts The Government In The Preaching Business

Flawed and cumbersome tax laws afflict taxpayers everywhere, but few are as irksome, as silly and as constitutionally dangerous as Maryland’s “stormwater remediation fee,” also known as “the rain tax,” including whatever penumbras and emanations that followed. Gov.-elect Larry Hogan, a Republican, vowed during his campaign to free taxpayers from the overreaching state law that claims to protect the Chesapeake Bay and other waterways from polluted runoff, flooding and erosion. Together with others, he argues persuasively that it amounts to little more than a weather levy, with accompanying clouds.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas describes the rain tax as an example of how the state overtaxes its residents, and he invites Maryland businesses to relocate to Texas, where the sun shines on business every day. Democratic legislators nevertheless troll for new ways to tax, but this time they have maybe gone too far.

The Washington Post reports that Maryland has offered tax incentives to religious congregations that can prove they are complying with the Maryland law’s mandates and their ministers are preaching “green” ideology from the pulpits. The churches, synagogues and mosques get modest relief, but in practice the tax man doubles as extortionist. The Constitution makes no exception to the First Amendment for a federal, state or local government to monitor or prescribe theology, however passionate the accountants and budget-makers may be. If the state of Maryland can write theology about the weather, it can monitor the Roman Catholic doctrine of the infallibility of the pope, or whether the Baptists can preach deep-water baptism.

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