Summarised by Centrist
University of Waikato law professor Dr Juliet Chevalier-Watts says New Zealand churches do so much good for the country that they should pay even less tax—not more.
A long-time atheist and expert in charity law, she began her research intending to argue the opposite. But after more than a decade studying the economic and legal role of religious charities, she’s changed her mind.
“Without churches, New Zealand would plunge into irreversible poverty and chaos overnight,” she said this week. “If anything, churches should receive more government support.”
Chevalier-Watts says the push to tax churches, often triggered by groups like Destiny Church making headlines, misses the bigger picture. Most churches operate quietly, she says, with little publicity but deep community reach.
According to her research, churches are powered by more than 65,000 volunteers and deliver frontline services like feeding the homeless, providing emergency accommodation, offering addiction support, and running financial literacy and legal aid programmes. “Churches help people in far greater ways than the government could, for a lot less money,” she argues.
She’s now calling for a task force to explore how churches could be further empowered, warning that taxing them could reduce support for the most vulnerable. “It’s not a handout,” she says. “It’s recognition of the public good they already provide.”
Editor’s note: The research, co-authored with accounting professor Frank Scrimgeour, claims religious charities contributed $6.1 billion in non-monetary value to New Zealand’s economy in 2018.
While that figure is striking, Centrist remains sceptical of studies that attach sweeping dollar values to social goods—these estimates can be subjective and are notoriously difficult to verify. But Chevalier-Watts’ central premise holds: churches are delivering services the state might otherwise be expected to fund.
