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Germany asks for your religion during your address registration, to collect church tax. It's one of the first forms you'll fill after moving to Germany. Howeve

• rawbot 4y ago
  And they start charging you without telling you directly (by a letter) or getting your consent! First thing I tell everyone moving here is that they should be careful with that form and be atheists officially. I ended up paying 4 years of tax before they relaxed the process.
  • stavros 4y ago
    But when the New Crusades begin again, guess who'll be the first to go!
    • marcosdumay 4y ago
      There are a few centuries of history telling you what are safe options to put there and what aren't. They won't come for atheists first.
  • tut-urut-utut 4y ago
    I don't want to be a devils advocate, but why is it a problem that you paid a church tax? In Germany, members of the church pay for the church service, it is made available to them by the church. It's just how it is, you pay the tax, and then you can marry for free, attend church for free, baptise your children free of charge, ... If you don't want to use or don't need their services, you can always cancel your church membership. It costs one visit to Bürgeramt and a few euros. I am sick of people staying in church and complaining that they should not pay. Before church tax, everyone had to pay through taxes, even people that are not members of catholic or evangelical church, like atheists and members of other confessions. That is immoral. Either pay or leave the church if it is not worth it for you to pay.
    • synotna 4y ago
      Being a member of a church should be opt-in not opt-out - by the individual, not their parents e.g. upon reaching adulthood you are sent an opt-in confirmation If you ignore, you are automatically removed It is absurd that you have to waste your time & money to make an appointment, go to the appointment and on top of that pay to opt-out
      • mytailorisrich 4y ago
        Religion should be a private matter and the state should not be involved at all, and should refuse to get involved.
        • krapp 4y ago
          Religion is too powerful a means of control for states not to involve themselves. Just look at the US - fifty years of secular, progressive law is being toppled like a chain dominoes for the sake of Christian jurisprudence, in what is supposed to be a nation with a separation between church and state.
        • synotna 4y ago
          I agree, alas legacy in society is even harder to get rid of than legacy in software (:
    • 9dev 4y ago
      I'll agree that if you are a member of a church and enjoy church service, you should pay church taxes, too - I'd go even further and say (as an atheist myself) if you're a believer and believe that churches do good things, even if you don't go there often or take advantage of everything that's offered to you, you have an obligation by your very faith to help by paying your share. Then again, I'm completely stumped as to why the government of a secular country (by constitution!) would ever involve so deeply in clerical matters that it would collect taxes for them, free of charge. That system is so dated and out of place for a modern society, I'm not surprised foreigners are very much irritated by it. Another issue is that you have to pay to opt out of being a member obliged to pay the tax. This is not about the amount (~10-60€), but the fact that all children of christian parents end up being church members before they're even old enough to decide for themselves, thus having to pay the tax or pay to opt out. The same applies to foreigners unaware of this. If churches had no tax to rely on, maybe they'd be more engaged to not continually loose members...
• gunapologist99 4y ago
  When the church and the government are too tightly intertwined, religious freedom ceases to exist. They are separate and should remain separate. In the United States, most Protestant churches are run by tithe (voluntary donation) and are not taxed at all (the Establishment Clause) or are paid as mandatory fee directly to the synagogue or local congregation. Most Protestant churches in the U.S. have seen declining membership and tithing, but that is not the fault of the government, and church tax is precisely the opposite of what Jesus and Paul laid out, as well as the allocation of tithes in Malachi. In neither case should or can the government get involved. Most churches in the U.S. are not megachurches. Most are much smaller. The abuses of a few shouldn't taint the whole concept.
  • nicbou 4y ago
    Although I agree with you, this form of taxation is entirely optional, and chosen by the churches. It’s a service provided by the state.
• cryptonector 4y ago
  > Germany asks for your religion Uh... > to collect church tax. What?? No, none of that is OK.
  • nicbou 4y ago
    The church asked for it. Other churches don’t. It’s a taxation-as-a-service scheme. Atheists and many religious denominations are unaffected.
    • cryptonector 4y ago
      Right, but, no, that should not be allowed.