I'm a simple emigrant and I don't pay church tax

Long ago, when Napoleon was reorganizing Europe, German churches took away most of their property. It went to the benefit of local princes as compensation for lands that they had given to France. In exchange, the authorities promised to help churches with state payments. But then they quickly realized that it would be good to shift this burden onto the end consumer, so to speak. And over the next years, land after land they quietly moved this obligation onto parishioners. Thus the church tax appeared. But not every church can receive this tax. It is available only to officially recognized religious "public-law" organizations, to which such a right has been given. Now this is mainly the Catholic and Evangelical churches, as well as some Jewish communities. Despite this, in 2024 there was collected 12.6 billion euros. But not all taxpayers did this knowingly. Usually there are two ways to accidentally sign up for the church tax: one for foreigners and the second for locals. The registration office, where we go for residency registration, asks foreigners about their faith. And those, unsuspecting, name it. But they do not know that sometimes by answering the question they become officially registered members of the religious community and effectively sign up to sponsor the church. Locals, on the other hand, are mostly just baptized by their parents. By registering thus a new member of the community, at some point they too begin to pay the tax. This becomes evident later when a person unexpectedly sees on their payroll that they are giving away 8-9% of their income tax monthly for some reason. That is, with a salary of 50,000 euros per year, they pay about 50 euros of church tax per month. And this deceived taxpayer realizes what they messed up, runs in a fit of emotion to unsubscribe from the tax immediately, because they were never in the church and did not plan to be! But that wasn't so simple. Although leaving the community is a simple matter, there is a snag: it is possible only through an application to the local court and a payment of about 30 euros. And, as is known, by the time you wait for your appointment, the dust will have settled and the church will have saved up more money from you. And in the best-case scenario you won't even catch the deadline, and then you'll forget, and thus you will continue paying the subscription of faith. For those who wander and seem to consider themselves to be part of one of these religions, but still want to refuse paying the tax, you should think carefully first. Here are some restrictions they will receive. Baptisms, weddings, funeral rites, confession and communion — will practically become unavailable to them. The same applies to those who want to become a godparent or a witness at a wedding. And they will also not be allowed to work in religious schools, nurseries and hospitals. And finally: they won't even be buried in a church cemetery! What do you think of such relations with the church? #money #Ordnung #taxes #history