Soon after buying the church, he filled out the town’s formal application for property tax exemption, based on his churchness. At issue was an annual tax bill of roughly $3,000. Though Connell was simply staking out his own place in Grafton’s carefully nurtured tax-avoidant landscape, news of his request for a religious exemption spread like a shock wave throughout the community. People were intensely interested, because dodging municipal property taxes comes with a certain irony: it’s a zero-sum game. Anytime one person successfully avoids paying taxes, others in town must pay more to make up
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