In 2015, the stand-up comedian John Oliver founded “Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption,” to show how easy it is to qualify as an American church and not pay taxes.
Wanting to test the laws and expose glaring loopholes, the English-born host of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” show, legally incorporated his parody church, receiving tax exempt status and allowing him to publicly raise tens of thousands through his broadcast appeal for “seed-based” faith donations.
“Churches. America’s favourite place for redemption and sixth favourite place for chicken,” Oliver quipped. “There are roughly 350,000 congregations in the United States, and many of them do great work: feeding the hungry, clothing the poor,” he added, launching his stinging August 17, 2015 report. “But this is not a story about them. This is about the churches who exploit people’s faith for monetary gain.”
