Amendment of the church tax deduction upon church entry

If you join or rejoin a tax-collecting religious community, you must pay church tax according to the church tax laws of the federal states, as a supplement to income tax or wage tax (wage church tax). The employer must therefore withhold not only the wage tax, but also the church tax from the employee's wages and pay it to the tax office every time a salary is paid. The corresponding procedure for deducting income church tax is largely automated. As a rule, you do not have to do anything else to meet your church tax obligations after you have declared your entry.

How and at what point the entry into the church is to be explained is regulated by the religious communities themselves. Church affiliation is recorded by the registration authorities of the federal states and can only be changed by them. The tax authorities have no influence on this. This is important, for example, if the authorities have incorrect data.

The registration authorities inform the Federal Central Tax Office (BZSt) of changes in church affiliation and the corresponding date. The BZSt stores the electronic wage tax deduction characteristics (ELStAM) in a database. The stored data also includes features for church tax deduction.

The BZSt provides the ELStAM to the employer for free automated retrieval. For the withholding of church tax in the tax deduction procedure by the employer, the ELStAM are decisive, i.e. the employer is bound by them and does not need to examine the question of church tax liability.