Nicaragua Taxes Tithes After Closing 1,500 Churches and Nonprofits

Hundreds of evangelical ministries lose legal status as Ortega regime confiscates assets and imposes up to 30 percent fee on offerings.

A series of policies recently enacted by the Nicaraguan government will significantly impact the activities of churches and ministries operating in the country.

Viewed by religious freedom specialists as an effort to increase the state’s control over religious institutions, the measures impose taxes on tithes and offerings while mandating that organizations create formal partnerships with the Nicaraguan government to carry out in-country projects. Local newspaper La Prensa estimates that taxes on tithes may reach 30 percent.

President Daniel Ortega introduced the bill that was unanimously approved on August 20 by the Asamblea Nacional. Ortega’s party, the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, which started in the 1970s as a guerrilla group, controls the legislature.

The changes in the law will favor “the development of projects of interest to families and communities within a framework of solidarity and adherence to national laws,” said Vice President Rosario Murillo, who is married to Ortega.

The scope of the new regulations has been vague. Both Murillo and an Asamblea Nacional statement on the bill described the laws as “strengthening transparency, legal security, respect, and harmony.” One likely consequence is that churches receiving foreign money—including funding from their own denominations—will be forced to enter into an alianza de asociación (“partnership alliance”) to access their funds.

The same day the legislation passed, the government canceled the legal status of 1,500 organizations, citing their failure to submit proper financial statements. For the first time since the Ortega administration began cracking down on nonprofits, nearly half ...

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