Talk:Church tax

Woah, did not realise, that still in this century, the church did not have to fund itself through charitable donations. Did england or france ever have it?

In answer to your question during the early 19th century in Ireland it was compulsary to pay tithes to the anglican church (The cause of much resentent in many quarters -particularly Roman Catholics who constituted the majority of the population) as (all of) Ireland was part of the United Kingdom at the time presumamably the law also applied in England (and Scotland/Wales etc)213.40.117.87 (talk) 20:04, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Austria section unclear

Church tax is compulsory in Austria is this correct and if so does the tax go to one church or is it distributed among several of them -if so how ? 213.40.117.87 (talk) 20:04, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Criticism of Church taxes

Apparently, there is a lot of critizism of Church taxes, from either liberal or left-wing parties, and also from within the Church (for example, it moves all the power to the main church administration). You can check this all on [[1]] but at the moment I don't see how to put this into the main entry in a nice way. -- Mipmip 11:20, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I was wondering whether the modern version of Church taxes were instituted by the Church itself, or whether it was a secular government tool created in order to discourage individual laypeople form remaining in the Church, given that paying taxes could be a factor in de-motivating individuals from participating in Church life. For instance, there was a comparable tax in Muslim countries called the Jizya that was historically used to forcefully compell local Christians to consider leaving Christianity and converting to Islam. ADM (talk) 22:59, 20 May 2009 (UTC)