This Logos post entitled “The chosen people of the IRS?” points to this New York Times article that reports on a California case that has uncovered a rather remarkable preference that the Internal Revenue Service has granted to the Church of Scientology.
Apparently, Scientology parents are allowed to deduct the cost of religious education as a charitable donation under an officially secret 1993 IRS agreement despite a 1989 Supreme Court decision prohibiting such a deduction. In the original case, the Ninth Circuit ruled against the plaintiff’s request for a deduction for the cost of Jewish religious education, but when it did so, one of the judges suggested an alternative approach:

“Why is Scientology training different from all other religious training?” Judge Barry D. Silverman wrote in his opinion, adding that the question would not be answered just then because the court was not faced with the question of whether “members of the Church of Scientology have become the I.R.S.’s chosen people.” Judge Silverman then recommended litigation to address whether the government is improperly favoring one religion.
“If the I.R.S. does in fact give preferential treatment to members of the Church of Scientology – allowing them a special right to claim deductions that are contrary to law and disallowed to everybody else – then the proper course of action is a lawsuit to put a stop to that policy,” Judge Silverman wrote.

So, the plaintiffs filed another lawsuit, and during the course of discovery in that case, a subpoena was issued for a copy of the “secret agreement”, but both the IRS and the Church of Scientology resisted producing it. Stay tuned.
As an aside, actor and director Steve Martin hilariously spoofed the Church of Scientology and its heavily Southern California clientele in his underrated comedy from several years ago, “Bowfinger.”