New tax exodus from the main Christian Churches

The first half of 2014 saw a further upsurge of people leaving both the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Germany, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt.

Ten thousand Protestants formally left their Church in Berlin, more than the total number in the whole of 2011 and 2012, and in Catholic Bavaria 14,800 left between January and June, compared with 9,800 during all of 2013.

In Bavaria and Baden-Württem­berg church tax is 8 per cent, and in the other German states it is 9 per cent of a person’s net income. Church tax on wages is levied automatically at source by the German Finance Office but it also applies to capital gains.

Up to now taxpayers have had to declare the latter on their income tax returns but from January 2015 the tax will be deducted automatically by their banks. Banks have therefore had to ask their clients to state their religious denomination.

Remarried divorcees have written to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung saying that they have formally left because they are afraid that the church authorities will find out that they have remarried in a register office and they may be barred from the sacraments.