AUSTRALIA
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The Salvation Army in Australia receives nearly half of its income from the taxpayer. In some countries this would raise concerns about state-supported religion. It would be of further concern to such people that the Salvation Army has not only a special status of being tax-free and not required to give any information on its finances or spending, it is also exempted from other laws, such as discrimination in employment and adherence to the minimum wage laws applicable to general businesses, in certain cases.
The organisation has always courted Australian politicians; especially Prime Ministers (see photos below). This is because the most money can be obtained from the Federal, rather than the State, governments.
A past “General” (i.e., sort of Pope) of the Salvation Army was an Australian, Eva Burrows. When she retired, the Prime Minister at the time, Bob Hawke, attended her “welcome home” to Australia party. She noted that, after a federal government “tax summit” she addressed, the Hawke government “announced that charities [like hers] would be free from the consumer tax and so forth.”
“We were quite friendly…. I may not have liked other aspects of his life [such as being a drunk and womanizer] but, nevertheless, there was a style in his leadership that I’d say was similar to mine.”
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