Hi all,
I’m a non-religious guy marrying a catholic in August
We’re looking for a new place to live and considering a number of places in Neuchatel and Vaud.
We did some comparisons of income tax for information and we found that in neuchatel, the comparis calculator adds a church tax in Neuchatel.
Is it correct that this is mandatory, or is it voluntary?
And does anybody know of a table with the different cantons showing the level of church tax? I’ve seen the general ones but not specific for church tax
Thanks for any info!
It's mandatory unless you declare that you are not a member of the church.
Tom
Church tax is not voluntary.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirchensteuer_(Schweiz )
If you belong to one of the "accepted" flavours and declare as such, you will automatically start paying taxes. The money will be used by your church of choice to keep the faith going, repair churches, pay religious salaries, pay for charities and support community centres.
Of course you can skip the declaration of faith and avoid the tax. But if you end up needing to use their services (wedding, funeral, communion), they might refuse. Think it as a club - you need to pay the membership fee to be able to use the facilities.
If you wish to leave said religion, there are certain cantons where they might make it difficult (catholics in St. Gallen have a Hotel California kind of deal).
If you want to check were to live, I'd rather pay attention to the city tax, as those ones can vary at much higher rate that the church tax.
Thanks for your inputs.
For some reason I think I heard that in Neuchatel in particular, they are voluntary. Maybe this is wrong then.
The city taxes certainly do make a bigger difference but the church tax is quite significant when comparing Neuchatel and Vaud (which does not seem to have any church tax)
Thanks
It looks like the church tax is voluntary in NE.
https://www.ne.ch/autorites/DFS/SCCO...siastique.aspx
(As always in Switzerland, YMMV - by canton, Gemeinde, phase of the moon.)
Hopefuly some of the NE contingent will be along with more information as to how the voluntary part works in actuality...
Somewhere in between... When you register at the community offices, if you state your religion as being one of the main religions practiced in Switzerland, then it becomes mandatory so long as you remain a member of that church.
On the other hand if you do not register a religion and pay no taxes, there is no problem about attending the religious services etc... Where it might get a bit difficult is if you later had children and wanted to have them baptised. The normal requirement is that a priest can not baptise a child into the Catholic church unless at least one of the parents and one of the godparents are Catholic. So if neither of you were registered as Catholic it would be a problem. It might also not go down too well with the Catholic grandparents either....
I know of one case where a parent has not spoken to their grown up son for the last few years, because as he said: "He gave up his religion for a couple a pieces of silver"
Religion is always a touchy subject.
It is definitely is not mandatory in Neuchâtel.
When you register at the commune they usually ask and I said ‘sans confession’ and we don’t pay any church tax.
Thanks. I certainly put sans confession myself (I am) but I imagine she probably put catholic when she arrived here a few years ago.
So if I understand right, it is mandatory if you tell the commune you are catholic? Rather than being voluntary in that case.
I imagine the tax is taken with all the others, so she wouldn't know if she's currently paying any church tax or not (she has impot a la source)?
If she told them she was catholic then she will be paying it. She can contact them and declare herself as without faith if she wants but as Jim said above she may run into problems if she wants to use the services of the Catholic Church here.
Edit to add: whilst technically the amount you pay is linked to your cantonal tax rate the bulletin de paiement that is sent for the church tax contribution has no amount stated on it and you are free to pay as much as you are comfortable with so it is not a fixed amount. The canton just a acts as an intermediary and passes the amount collected on to the relevant church.
Based on this you fiancée must know if she pays it and how much.