11.6.5 Difference in tax treatment of religion, spirituality and philosophy of life in tax laws and justification

In income tax, real estate tax and energy tax, there is a difference in tax treatment on one or more of the three levels mentioned, but it is not a significant difference.

In the income tax, donations to the pastors of rslis are deductible, but donations to natural persons of other anbis are not.

The real estate tax does have an exception for publicly accessible real estate intended for use by rslis, but no exception for publicly accessible real estate used by other anbis. In practice, it can also happen that (spiritual) institutions that do not qualify as a spiritual association with an underlying philosophy of life cannot successfully invoke the exception. Insofar as it concerns a rsli with an underlying philosophy of life that does not meet the ECHR requirements (a certain degree of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance), there is no question of equal cases and therefore no difference in fiscal treatment.

Although the refund scheme in the energy tax applies to publicly accessible immovable property in use by both rsli and other anbis, an additional condition applies to the other anbis.

There is no justification for the difference in deduction of gifts to natural persons if there is an identification of a natural person with the anbi concerned. For the other differences in tax treatment identified above, the assessment framework does not provide any objective and reasonable grounds for justification.