4 ms·

All in this article looked standard up to the point where I discoved that: "This is assuming that you are single and not a church member, because there is an e

All in this article looked standard up to the point where I discoved that: "This is assuming that you are single and not a church member, because there is an extra tax (around 9% of your income tax) if you belong to one." Wtf germany? I have found more info: https://www.nomadenberlin.com/blog2/german-church-tax-kirchensteuer https://www.nomadenberlin.com/blog2/german-church-tax-kirche... it is a complete non-sense to me, if ever you wanted to give, why you are not allowed to decide the amount and to who you give? And 9% is a very important amount in my opinion! The more crazy, if ever you wanted to change your situation to declare yourself not a church member, then you have to fill forms with multiple id, and pay 30euros of fee.

k__ 6y ago
Yes, it's strange. But many of my millenial friends aren't even baptized, so they don't have to pay the tax. Also, you can "leave" a church any time you want.
- lucb1e 6y ago
  > you can "leave" a church any time you want. For a small fee and an in-person visit to an office "near" you! Or so I've heard (I live in Germany but have never been a church member here so I wouldn't know myself).
  - k__ 6y ago
    Yes. This sucks especially for people living in the countryside. But the fee isn't that much compared to what you have to pay in taxes.
    - summm 6y ago
      it's like 30€ to 50€
      - k__ 6y ago
        I paid 20€
    - lucb1e 6y ago
      No but what would you say if cancelling your Comcast subscription cost you "not that much" compared to 10% of your income? It's the craziest thing, to me at least, how the heck is this legal? Why can I sign someone else up at birth for paying stuff and yet not be the person liable? And then when they want to cancel my subscription, they have to pay a fine for cancelling? It's beyond me, even if it's not about a lot of money. Which, I guess, is why it still exists and everyone just swallows it and the church can do things like approve fighting HIV and then launch an investigation when they employed condoms, recommending "natural" contraception methods (in detail) in the same investigation document as well as recommending husbands/wives to just not have sex to not give their partner HIV (and outside of marriage obviously doesn't exist). (I found this via the wikileaks talk at 36c3 and was rather weirded out https://wikileaks.com/popeorders/document/Attachment_9-Commission_of_Inquiry/Attachment_9-Commission_of_Inquiry.pdf https://wikileaks.com/popeorders/document/Attachment_9-Commi... )
      - k__ 6y ago
        Yes, I hate it too. It gives the church too much power here in Germany. The reasoning is often, that the churches are the biggest providers of social and health related charity. They own schools and hospitals etc. pp. I never understood why they didn't simply nationalize these things if they think it should be paid by taxes. I have no issue in paying taxes for hospitals and schools, but I don't want that part of that money also pays for some crazy faith.
jFriedensreich 6y ago
Yes the connection of state and church in germany is really creepy to me too. Even if you are not part of a church it is backwards for the state to collect church fees at all and accordingly forces you to check the checkboxes on nearly all official forms what church you belong to. In addition we have to remember that Chancellor Merkels party which is one of the big two parties is called the "christian democrats" it is also totally common for the main news programs of public service broadcaster networks to report on the pope and bishops as if they were relevant political figures and also broadcast church service programs on sundays. The church bells will ring at incredible volume on sundays and other days without any mercy and everything has to be shut down on sundays, not even grocery shopping is possible.
barbazoo 6y ago
> And 9% is a very important amount in my opinion! It's important to know what amount that's 9% of. In case of the German Kirchensteuer it's 9% of your income tax [0], not of your gross income or even after tax income. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirchensteuer_%28Deutschland%29#Steuers%C3%A4tze https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirchensteuer_%28Deutschland%2...
zwieback 6y ago
What's even weirder: church attendance is super low compared the US, the average German pays not to go but on the flipside churches act like social service arms of the government (meals on wheels, eldercare, etc.) Schools also have religious instruction as a main class, although you can opt out. I'm a lifelong atheist but thoroughly enjoyed the religion classes, even picked it as a minor in my upper division classes. This might have changed, though, I left Germany 30yrs ago.
- ben0x539 6y ago
  I grew up in a rural village in Germany. The church operated the kindergarten and the retirement home, and ran some youth organizations with stuff like kids' summer activities. One city over the church ran the hospital, like, to the point where they had nuns on-site. I never really looked too deeply into it but it always felt weird to me how entangled the church is with what is basically treated as public services and hence public finances, since they still get to apply their religious values to hiring discrimination and that sort of thing. I didn't regularly attend the religion classes, but I did once or twice and they gave me candy for memorizing the ten commandments. Organized religion is a-ok in my book! (In high school, they offered an "ethics" class as alternative to denomination-based religion classes, but I guess in the much smaller elementary school the student numbers wouldn't have justified that.)
  - summm 6y ago
    The religious service providers are reimbursed by the gov and by social insurances just like any other commercial provider. They also get to enjoy lesser worker's protection laws, e.g. they may fire employees who convert away from their religion.
balfirevic 6y ago
Hah, to a Croatian that sounds fantastic, you can actually opt out! Here the government just gives gobs of money to the church, which then in turns does the propaganda for the said government.

k__ 6y ago

Yes, it's strange. But many of my millenial friends aren't even baptized, so they don't have to pay the tax. Also, you can "leave" a church any time you want.

lucb1e 6y ago
> you can "leave" a church any time you want. For a small fee and an in-person visit to an office "near" you! Or so I've heard (I live in Germany but have never been a church member here so I wouldn't know myself).
- k__ 6y ago
  Yes. This sucks especially for people living in the countryside. But the fee isn't that much compared to what you have to pay in taxes.
  - summm 6y ago
    it's like 30€ to 50€
    - k__ 6y ago
      I paid 20€
  - lucb1e 6y ago
    No but what would you say if cancelling your Comcast subscription cost you "not that much" compared to 10% of your income? It's the craziest thing, to me at least, how the heck is this legal? Why can I sign someone else up at birth for paying stuff and yet not be the person liable? And then when they want to cancel my subscription, they have to pay a fine for cancelling? It's beyond me, even if it's not about a lot of money. Which, I guess, is why it still exists and everyone just swallows it and the church can do things like approve fighting HIV and then launch an investigation when they employed condoms, recommending "natural" contraception methods (in detail) in the same investigation document as well as recommending husbands/wives to just not have sex to not give their partner HIV (and outside of marriage obviously doesn't exist). (I found this via the wikileaks talk at 36c3 and was rather weirded out https://wikileaks.com/popeorders/document/Attachment_9-Commission_of_Inquiry/Attachment_9-Commission_of_Inquiry.pdf https://wikileaks.com/popeorders/document/Attachment_9-Commi... )
    - k__ 6y ago
      Yes, I hate it too. It gives the church too much power here in Germany. The reasoning is often, that the churches are the biggest providers of social and health related charity. They own schools and hospitals etc. pp. I never understood why they didn't simply nationalize these things if they think it should be paid by taxes. I have no issue in paying taxes for hospitals and schools, but I don't want that part of that money also pays for some crazy faith.

jFriedensreich 6y ago

Yes the connection of state and church in germany is really creepy to me too. Even if you are not part of a church it is backwards for the state to collect church fees at all and accordingly forces you to check the checkboxes on nearly all official forms what church you belong to. In addition we have to remember that Chancellor Merkels party which is one of the big two parties is called the "christian democrats" it is also totally common for the main news programs of public service broadcaster networks to report on the pope and bishops as if they were relevant political figures and also broadcast church service programs on sundays. The church bells will ring at incredible volume on sundays and other days without any mercy and everything has to be shut down on sundays, not even grocery shopping is possible.

barbazoo 6y ago

> And 9% is a very important amount in my opinion! It's important to know what amount that's 9% of. In case of the German Kirchensteuer it's 9% of your income tax [0], not of your gross income or even after tax income. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirchensteuer_%28Deutschland%29#Steuers%C3%A4tze https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirchensteuer_%28Deutschland%2...

zwieback 6y ago

What's even weirder: church attendance is super low compared the US, the average German pays not to go but on the flipside churches act like social service arms of the government (meals on wheels, eldercare, etc.) Schools also have religious instruction as a main class, although you can opt out. I'm a lifelong atheist but thoroughly enjoyed the religion classes, even picked it as a minor in my upper division classes. This might have changed, though, I left Germany 30yrs ago.

ben0x539 6y ago
I grew up in a rural village in Germany. The church operated the kindergarten and the retirement home, and ran some youth organizations with stuff like kids' summer activities. One city over the church ran the hospital, like, to the point where they had nuns on-site. I never really looked too deeply into it but it always felt weird to me how entangled the church is with what is basically treated as public services and hence public finances, since they still get to apply their religious values to hiring discrimination and that sort of thing. I didn't regularly attend the religion classes, but I did once or twice and they gave me candy for memorizing the ten commandments. Organized religion is a-ok in my book! (In high school, they offered an "ethics" class as alternative to denomination-based religion classes, but I guess in the much smaller elementary school the student numbers wouldn't have justified that.)
- summm 6y ago
  The religious service providers are reimbursed by the gov and by social insurances just like any other commercial provider. They also get to enjoy lesser worker's protection laws, e.g. they may fire employees who convert away from their religion.

balfirevic 6y ago

Hah, to a Croatian that sounds fantastic, you can actually opt out! Here the government just gives gobs of money to the church, which then in turns does the propaganda for the said government.