“Keep The Customer Satisfied”: Cardinal Schönborn and the Kirchensteuer

Mundabor's Blog

In order to try to understand what is happening in Austria, it is perhaps useful to inform the readers about a peculiarity of Austria, Germany and Switzerland. In these countries, you can pay a kind of voluntary tax, or more simply said a tithe, through your normal income tax. This is called Kirchensteuer in Germany and Switzerland, and Kirchenbeitrag in Austria.

This means that:

1) the taxman will do everything for you, and give the money to the relevant church;

2) Once you have registered for the tax, you’ll pay automatically in proportion to your income tax (Germany) or to your taxable income (Austria);

3) In Germany, the procedure to get out of the tax was considered, last time I looked, bureaucratic and unpleasant, so that there is a kind of psychological/administrative disincentive to the dreaded Kirchenaustritt, the getting out of the system.

In the countries where it is…

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