Should Auckland Council be rating churches? Yes, they should. Are they rating them for the right reasons? Probably not.

They're cash-hungry, they're greedy, they're over-reachers and they see an easy hit.

But in their defence this time, they are right. Churches are not special when it comes to rating purposes.

The fact they do good things in the community is not an argument. Lots of groups and organisations do good things in the community, but they still have to pay their rates. Lots of people, individually, do good things in the community, but they're still charged GST, and still deal with the IRD on income.

There is always an excuse, a reason, or a rational on getting out of any bill if you want to put the energy into it.

Yesterday's discussion on capital gains treatment of shareholdings on a bit of paper makes sense. Did you buy the shares directly, or indirectly through KiwiSaver? And should those purchases be treated differently? You can argue both ways, and reasonably coherently.

But we all know who's ultimately winning. When you make the rules, you use the rules to collect the coin. That's how governments and councils work.

But aren't churches poor? Well, yes and no. Some specific parishes don’t have a bean, but then that’s the case with some businesses, homeowners, and some individuals.

But some parts of religion are wealthy beyond our wildest imaginings, there are churches that have land holdings to rival anyone on the planet.

And if they can afford that, they can afford rates.

It's easy to go soft on religion because it's emotional, it's full of history, precedents have been set. But just because you are a religious institution does not in and of itself extract you from the wider dealings, and transactions of the society in which you operate.

Being a nice guy doing good deeds is not a free pass, if it was we'd all be lined up.