Professor puts religion in tax debate

? Could a Bible Belt state where so many people claim to follow Christianity really be taxing personal incomes as low as $4,600 annually for a family of four — the lowest threshold of any state — while letting wealthy timber owners pay less than $1 per acre in property taxes?

Susan Pace Hamill, a former Internal Revenue Service attorney, couldn’t believe what she was reading.

“I looked at it and said, ‘That’s got to be a misprint,”‘ said Hamill, recalling a newspaper article two years ago. “I began checking and found out within two hours it wasn’t.”

She is now on a crusade to force the state to change, arguing that its tax structure is immoral and Christians have a moral duty to do something about it. One supporter calls her an “accidental prophet.”

But change is difficult in a state that was long dominated by land barons and racial segregationists. Even some Christian groups have greeted Hamill’s campaign with little enthusiasm.

At the heart of Hamill’s argument is the idea that the government and the rich are profiting from the poor, something the Bible prohibits.

Hamill, now a University of Alabama law professor, wrote a thesis for a master’s degree in theology spelling out the moral duty of Christians to work for a fairer tax system in Alabama.

Based on six months of research by assistants, she concluded that 71 percent of Alabama’s land is forest owned by timber interests that pay only 2 percent of the state’s property taxes because of rates written to favor agriculture and paper companies.

“That is the indictment,” she said in an interview.

Old Testament laws required fairness to the poor, and Jesus taught that people should care for “the least of these.” Hamill, who attends a United Methodist Church in Tuscaloosa, argues that means believers are required to make sure the state doesn’t disproportionately burden its poorest residents.

“Alabama’s tax structure fails to come close to meeting the moral demands that God has revealed for us in the Bible,” she wrote.

The thesis was printed in condensed form in newspapers statewide last fall as an op-ed piece, and the full version was later published in the Alabama Law Review.

The Rev. Jim Evans, a moderate Baptist who has long supported tax reform on biblical principles, called Hamill an “accidental prophet.”

“We have discussed her work at our church, but mostly informally,” Evans said. “The real strength of her work is in the analysis of the tax structure itself, especially property tax.”

But such support is not universal among the state’s churches.

The head of the conservative Christian Coalition of Alabama, John Giles, said Hamill went too far in equating opposition to tax reform with sin.