Asklemmy

43502 readers

1454 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

157

What is something that definitely should not exist? (endlesstalk.org)

submitted 10 months ago by ani@endlesstalk.org to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

220 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] bestusername@aussie.zone 182 points 10 months ago (22 children)

Tax exemption for religious organisations.

[–] federalreverse@feddit.de 28 points 10 months ago (6 children)

Could be worse, I guess. I live in a "secular" democracy that essentially collects members fees for the Catholic and Lutheran churches (and only those two!) via the federal income tax.

[–] captainjaneway@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago (4 children)

In Germany, state-recognized churches collect taxes from their members in order to finance their activities as well as wages. Everyone who is a member of an officially recognized religious group automatically gets a percentage of their monthly wage taken from their paycheck. Usually, this amounts to around 9% of income tax — with the exception of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, where the church tax amounts to 8%.

For native Germans, church tax is often automatically collected. Many Germans are baptized at a young age and thereby become members of a particular church, which means they pay taxes to that church when they begin to earn income as an adult.

If you’re a foreigner moving to Germany, you can declare your affiliation to a church when you register at your local citizen’s office.

9%? That's absurd. Is there a way to remove yourself from this?

[–] RandomlyRight@sh.itjust.works 7 points 10 months ago

You can only resign from being part of the church, which many young people do once they see this on their first paycheck.

load more comments (3 replies)

load more comments (4 replies)

load more comments (19 replies)