Protests to the Federal Chancellor's Office

Here, by way of example, we are publishing two replies from the German Federal Chancellor's Office to letters protesting against the enforced imposition of church tax on unemployed non-church members. In these largely standardised written replies, we see once again that, as in the court rulings, the lie is being spread that »there is still a clear majority of workers who belong to a church«. In reality, however, as we had to use detective methods to find out, this figure is only 53%. Can this even be called a clear majority, let alone an overwhelming one? If we take East Germany into account, which has unemployment figures of up to 25% but only 15% church membership, we even have to speak of a clear minority.
   Furthermore, the claim of the Federal Chancellor's Office is as incorrect as it is irrelevant: fraud is fraud, and discrimination is discrimination, whether only one citizen or thousands are its victims.

The second standard formula used in the letters – »usually« or, alternatively, »standard« – is intended to imply that when deducting the church tax, the state is merely concerned with avoiding excessive bureaucracy. Anyone who has ever filled in a tax form knows that this is a bare-faced lie, since every cent is examined with extreme precision. And how does the poor state manage to distinguish between those who are married and those who are not, or to avoid the payment of a flat sum of child benefit to everyone?!

We would like to ask everyone who has written a protest letter and has received such replies to explain with politeness but absolute clarity that they will not be palmed off with such brazen and blatant lies.

Furthermore, we would like to ask once again all those who feel outraged at this injustice being done to the non-religious unemployed to send a protest letter with regard to the appeal pending in Stuttgart to:

1.    In no way does »the legislative body decide« (»entscheidet sich der Gesetzgeber«) for standardisation in the case of marital status and child benefit. On the contrary: the legislative body does not baulk at expending vast amounts of bureaucratic time – and even sticks at trifles if it sees potential advantages for itself – on obtaining all the relevant information on its taxpayers, right down to the poorest pensioners, in order to exploit this information for its own benefit.

2.    Church tax does not fund any state service, such as the fees for refuse disposal or the state support of public transport, but is instead a membership fee for an association the enforced collection and distribution of which – in contrast to membership fees for other associations – the German and Austrian states had, under the influence of Hitler, set up mainly as a reward for Pope Pius XI's services in helping Hitler's initially controversial government on the way towards international recognition. Even though the successor state of the Third Reich deigns to maintain this regulation, in no way does this make the membership fee for a voluntary, non-state organisation a »legal deduction« (»gesetzlicher Entgeldabzug«), since such deduction may only be levied to support a service rendered by the state. A secondary diversion of the money collected with reference to the Hitler concordat does not alter the fact that such collection, which disadvantages the non-religious and also other religions such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, was unlawful right from the outset – just like a pickpocket cannot be immune from prosecution if he proves that he did not, as he was accused of doing, use the stolen money for himself, but instead donated it to charity.
   In reality, the state is obviously all out to prevent the poorest of its inhabitants from gaining an indirect advantage by not supporting the privileged religious institutions, which they generally detest, since this could also make »waverers« think of withdrawing their support. However, distorting competition on the ideological market is not the state's job: on the contrary, it contradicts the fundamental principles of a civil state governed by the rule of law – in fact, it is a scandal for such a state. Furthermore, it is in breach of the German constitution in that it disadvantages those of its citizens who do not belong to a religious community, or at least not to one of the privileged ones, since those who do belong to a privileged religious community and therefore presumably wish it to benefit, may regard the extra money taken from them, even if it is diverted for other purposes, as an indirect advantage for the organisation they support and therefore as an indirect advantage for themselves, too, while those unemployed people who are either not religious or belong to one of the disadvantaged religious groups cannot do this in any way, which means that the latter are not only being disadvantaged but also derided at the same time. This was similar with the Jews in the Vatican State, which was finally dissolved by Garibaldi, whose taxes were used purely for church purposes. However, the German constitution (article 3 I, III GG, article 4 I GG and article 33 III S. 2 GG [GG = Grundgesetz, German Basic Law]), expressly and without any ambiguity or loophole whatsoever, forbids any disadvantaging of people who do or, as is mostly the case with us, do not belong to any religious community.
   The measure of the deceitful and dishonourable brain contortions of the Chancellor's Office bureaucracy can be determined when examining these points! (But please be sure to answer as politely as the Chancellor's Office, who are inwardly seething just as much, are doing!)