On: HIV status of over 14,000 people leaked online, Si...

[laurentlb]

Whenever someone moves to Germany, they have to get registered. One of the question is about the religion (for tax purposes). I'm surprised Germany still uses this kind of registry.

[est31 → laurentlb]

Note that the registry for this is not central but managed by the towns instead. So it's very decentralized and data in this aggregated form doesn't exist. An often used trick by towns is to pretend some person didn't move away from the town, thus not decreasing the number of people who live there, thus increasing the number of various funds that are paid based on how many citizens the town has. So those registries often aren't 100% accurate.

[sorokod → laurentlb]

Curious - how does one's religion affects one's taxes?

[martin_a → sorokod]

It's not so much about the religion itself, but whether you are "active" member of a confession.

If you are, you will pay a "church tax" like 1% of your income. If you are not, you don't have to pay that tax.

So it's more about tax collection and distribution than about anything else.

[sorokod → martin_a]

So in tax terms atheism makes sense?

[shaki-dora → sorokod]

Yes. It is, I believe, 3% of income tax, i. e. about 1% of income for most people.

[onetimemanytime → laurentlb]

>>One of the question is about the religion (for tax purposes). I'm surprised Germany still uses this kind of registry.

Forward thinking? Never know when they might need a list of people by religion, ethnicity, invalid status. Better to have and not use, than to need and not have it...or something :)

[martin_a → onetimemanytime]

Nah, it's really just about taxes.

I think it's 1% of your income or something like that which is collected by the state for the church. (That itself is often discussed in Germany, as state and church should obviously not be mixed...)

But you can "leave" the church, it costs something like 40 Euro for the administrative action and that's it. No discussion whatsoever and you can keep your money. :-D

[craftyguy → martin_a]

> Nah, it's really just about taxes.

Well, right now it is. The original registry OP is referring to was probably not started to identify and exterminate people who were Jewish, but started for some more innocent reason and then abused when the wrong party assumed power.

[martin_a → craftyguy]

I'm not totally into this right now but I think there were no such registrations in the beginning.

But as the Nazis had more and more influence laws ("Nürnberger Gesetze") were passed which required Jewish people to mark their shops and register themselves as Jewish etc. pp.

Also denunciations and more from neighbors happened, after Jews were declared "enemies" of the state, so everything came together.

edit: But potential misuse of any kind of registers by whomever is obviously the strongest point against those registers after all. Right-wing parties are always eager to have such things for obvious reasons.