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I am just curious because I have never heard of this before. Bro. Lynn at the Lady Lake COG announced this morning that the church needed $2700 to pay Lake County for Fire fighting Fees.This not taxes, since the church is tax exempt. But I have never heard of it before. Have any pastors here ran into this sort of charge before? Some facts but mostly just my [email protected]/

Some states (like South Carolina where I'm at) there is a annual services fee. Ours comes from the water/sewage/trash department (of course we pay for water and trash pickup in our monthly bill). Unless its changed, when I was a California pastor we paid taxes on the parsonage (perhaps because it was not on the same property as the church). Also, at that time if you used the church kitchen for cooking food to raise funds, they city wanted you to have a resale license and wanted to tax the square footage of the kitchen. I'm not sure if any churches complied with this. More and more municipalities are making it hard to build churches due to loss of property tax revenues and/or demanding street improvements to accommodated the increased traffic and sewage resulting from the church. My sister's local church in Riverside, CA, is in an older, poorer neighborhood. The church has been committed to ministering in the neighborhood, which the city has recognized and honored, but when it come to expanding the church to connect to the next street over (in addition to the current street) the city wants the church to pay for improvements up and down the block (wider street, sidewalks, sewer and storm water). That cost would dwarf the cost of the expansion and has them thinking about moving the church.

In NC the state and counties have gone after churches

Boy, I guess I am learning something. I will check our home church in North CArolina to see what they pay. Many years ago when I pastored as long as the deed was owned by a church there was no extra costs. Water, elec, sewer were the only expenses naturally. Some facts but mostly just my [email protected]/

And then there is insurance - along the coast you add flood insurance - and don't forget background checks (and their cost) or your insurance is higher. If you build it, you will have to maintain it!