Documentary film-maker Alex Gibney has written a comment piece for the Los Angeles Times criticising Scientology’s tax-exempt status.

Gibney, who recently made the controversial HBO documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, has called for the organisation’s definition as a religion to be revoked, so that it becomes liable for taxation.

While he does believe that Scientology can be defined as a religion, he claims it fails to act in the way that a religion should, in order to be exempt from paying taxes. One of his key arguments concerns “private interests”, as a religion should not in any way serve the needs of just one individual.

“Regarding ‘private interests’, it seems clear that Scientology is ruled by only one man, David Miscavige,” he writes. “Further, powerful celebrities within the church, particularly Tom Cruise, receive private benefits through the exploitation of low-wage labour (clergy members belonging to the Sea Organisation make roughly 40 cents an hour) and other use of church assets for his personal gain.”

The film team review Going Clear Guardian

Gibney also talks of the many illegal activities that the church has been accused of, again threatening its status as a religion with the US government.

“Numerous lawsuits, my film, other media accounts and an abandoned FBI investigation have turned up allegations of false imprisonment, human trafficking, wiretaps, assault, harassment and invasion of privacy,” he writes. “And the church doctrine of ‘disconnection’, in which members are forced to ‘disconnect’ from anyone critical of the church, seems cruelly at odds with any reasonable definition of ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’.”

Since making Going Clear, Gibney has found himself targeted by the church, with Scientologists highly critical of the film, Gibney himself and those featured in it. “The ex-Scientologists who testify in Going Clear have been on the receiving end of surveillance and a smear campaign on the Scientology website Freedommag.org,” he writes. “In one of the attack videos, titled Crocodile Liar, a bull’s-eye frames a picture of Sara Goldberg, a grandmother who left the church in 2013. Rather than engage in informed debate, the videos accuse the critical ex-members of various misdeeds, including theft and perjury, without mentioning that some appear to have been committed on behalf of the church.”

The church responded to the film, describing it as full of “bald faced lies” before its release, but has yet to respond to Gibney’s latest piece. Last week saw John Travolta defend Scientology, saying he had no plans to watch the documentary, which seemed totally at variance with his own experiences of the church.

“I haven’t experienced anything that the hearsay has [claimed], so why would I communicate something that wasn’t true for me?” he said. “It wouldn’t make sense, nor would it for Tom [Cruise], I imagine.”