Nope. You cannot use your housing allowance for a second home.

My megacompensated SBC clergy brethren might have to reassess their use of the Sacred Clergy Housing Allowance for their homes in Sedona or on Virgin Gorda.

Last year I wrote about the housing allowance in You can have my Housing Allowance when you pry my cold, dead hands off of it...or when lawmakers get fed up with the abuse of the minister’s housing allowance by rich ministries, religious racketeers, and greedy pastors who have a second home and put much of their income in a housing allowance for that home, every dollar of it completely free from any income tax at all.

The piece linked above is on the scandal of trumpeter Phil Driscoll who was using about $200,000 of his clergy housing allowance for a second home. Not his first – a second (in some court filings the phrase the plural “second homes” is used).

I might have called it a scandal by a greedy ex-con ordained musician but it was perfectly legal. Join the ministry and shelter hundreds of thousands of dollars in income from any income tax, perfectly legal, and enjoy sun and fun while doing it.

Ridiculous.

The idea that Joe Sixpack is paying taxes and Phil Driscoll is being given tax breaks for money he uses to pay for vacation homes is both abhorrent and absurd to this retired SBC pastor who continues to receive part of his retirement in the form of a housing allowance.

CPA Peter J. Reilly, far more of an expert on this business than I, has a contribution in Forbes on the latest developments: Court Stomps on Clergy Tax Abuse

Seems that a federal appeals court has ruled that when the tax code refers to the housing allowance as “that rental allowance paid to him as part of his compensation, to the extent used by him to rent or provide a home” it means A home, not a bunch of homes.

I offer a Baptist hurrah for the singular being interpreted as one and not many.

The problem for us non-trumpet playing hackers and plodders in ministry is that folks are always suing the government to eliminate the housing allowance. Cases like Driscoll’s may eventually arouse sufficient indignation at religious racketeers and greedy preachers to cause lawmakers to severely restrict or eliminate even our modest housing allowances.

I don’t care how many homes Phil Driscoll has. I do care if his use of the housing allowance brings down the ire of sensible people on ordinary, one domicile, clergy like myself and almost all of my colleagues.

I appreciate Peter Reilly calling my attention to the matter. Frank Page, Richard Land and GuideStone - pay attention, please.

We knew it was coming: Housing Allowance challenged, again.

Our sacred tax loophole, the housing allowance, survives once again

You can have my Housing Allowance when you pry my cold, dead hands off of it…

…or when lawmakers get fed up with the abuse of the minister’s housing allowance by rich ministries, religious racketeers, and greedy pastors who have a second home and put much of their income in a housing allowance for that home, every dollar of it completely free from any income tax at all.

Someone make the case that Joe Sixpack has to pay taxes on his income and doesn’t get any exclusion for his singlewide complete with a deck and a mangy dog sleeping under it, while Kenneth and Gloria Copeland live in an 18,280 square-foot lakefront parsonage on 25 acres valued at $6.2 million and exclude hundreds of thousands of dollars from income taxes under the housing allowance, or while Phil Driscoll enjoys not owing federal income taxes on $408,638 provided to him by his ministry to buy a second home on a lake near Cleveland, Tenn.

No less than the Wall Street Journal writes on this issue,
Tax Break for Clergy Questioned.

I appreciate the writing of CPA Peter J. Reilly in Forbes on the matter,
Wall Street Journal Catches Up With Me on Clergy Tax Abuse
. Reilly's December article on the matter examined the Driscoll case in detail.

The SBC Executive Committee’s attorney, Augie Boto, is quoted in the WSJ article to say that "the housing allowance is critically important for making ends meet—it is not a luxury." True enough for almost all of us hackers and plodders in the SBC’s 46,000 churches who might be able to put $20k or so of our income in the housing allowance and save a few thousand annually on income taxes. It's not us that cause the disgust with this particular tax law.

Augie Boto, Frank Page, the SBC Executive Committee and our favorite SBC lobbyist, Richard Land, ought to be proactive on this matter and find a way to support legislation that will preserve the Housing Allowance in a reasonable fashion while excluding the ridiculous abuses, legal though they may be, by people like Phil Driscoll and Kenneth Copeland.

Else we all will lose. Besides that, it just ain't right.