Government is never the answer. Let society rearrange itself and you'll get the optimal result.

Besides, taxing is straight-up looting. No entity should ever pay taxes.

Freedom of belief though >.

answer to op: nope

Doesn't the constitution forbid that?

You have some valid points here, but if the government even thought of putting any regulations on religion the world would erupt into outrage and would end up causing lots of chaos. If we were to fix this issue Munchies has the point that society would need to fix this issue before the government ever could.

Taxes - yes, unless they're explicitly operating for the public good alone like a charity

Cults - if there's any negative effects of cults (e.g. slavery), they're already illegal.

Extremists - if they're just talking, then freedom of speech. If they're blowing up things, that's already illegal.

Intolerance - you want the government to regulate thoughts??

No. Otherwise we'd need to start regulating aethiests too. It takes more pig headed faith to believe in ansolute nothing than something. Even Carl Sagan was aegnostic instead of aethiest.

There's an important distinction that should be drawn between Western religions that organize themselves in a similar fashion including Christianity, Catholicism, and Islam, and Eastern religions that focus more on spirituality and improving the self, such as Hinduism and Buddhism.

Western religions are a serious problem, and it's state mandated lack of interference that has let them get as powerful as they have been. People willingly get violent, and use their religion as a scapegoat for bigotry or outright hatred. It's a sad state of affairs, and by offering religious freedom, unfortunately, this is the kind of thing that happens. Notice that when religion causes problems, it seems to always revolve around confrontational Western religions. Granted, you can pick out times of blatant religious intolerance in places such as Japan in the past, but it has never been as troublesome or consistent as in Western countries.

Overall, I have no idea what the best way to handle it is. I guess officially declaring the religion to be atheism for a country can prevent religious interference on higher levels, while giving reason to stop giving massive tax breaks to every person that wants to call their building a church. It doesn't solve any of the deeper issues that have been prevalent for centuries though that are so deeply embedded in our cultures that it seems impossible to get past.

I really get the sense that like 80% of this thread's purpose is just to troll, but for the sake of the 20% that can be taken seriously...

No, that's an absolutely miserable, horrible, awful idea. Setting aside the issues of constitutionality and the fact that it would violate numerous amendments, and the huge backlash that would inevitably follow and possibly cripple society, it's completely unfeasible. What would you even do to "regulate" it? Limit the size of churches? Remove Christian books from the aisle? Take down the Trinity Broadcasting Network? And what would be the standard for influence? A religion is only allowed so many believers or something?

Trying to regulate religion is a god awful idea (pun intended).

Some words are best left unspoken.